An Army wife friend of mine is diabetic and has been taking insulin for eight years. Last fall she and her husband were moved to a new duty station where she was assigned a new primary care manager at a military hospital that shall remain shameless – oops, I mean nameless.

When she tried to order her diabetic supplies, including insulin, a representative of the hospital told her she couldn’t possibly be diabetic because they didn’t have any record of her diabetes. I have experienced similar frustrations with the same military hospital because of my own unusual medical history.

It all comes down to the fact that military families move A LOT. When we move, we change doctors. Not only do we move, but our military doctors get transferred around a lot as well, so we end up seeing a dozen different doctors within a span of six months – no exaggeration. On top of that, we may have a chronic condition that requires us to see one or more specialists outside the military healthcare system. The result is inconsistent and very fragmented healthcare.

Fortunately, Humana Military Healthcare Services has recognized this problem and is trying to create a solution – in the form of a website for Tricare Prime beneficiaries (such as myself) to help manage our chronic care health information, even when we see a civilian doctor. When I learned about this website idea I nearly jumped up and did a jig.

While I don’t expect the MyActiveHealth website to end all of my military healthcare frustrations, I do think this is a huge step in the right direction. The idea is for the website to offer a secure way to store our health information and medical history so that we (hopefully) won’t have to deal with anyone telling us we don’t have a chronic disease simply because it’s not in their records.