Cognitive Rehabilitation

Cognitive rehabilitation is commonly used to refer to a class of cognitive rehabilitation treatment services designed to improve cognitive function after a brain injury, including traumatic brain injury.

Cognitive rehabilitation services are frequently part of a comprehensive package of physical therapy, occupational therapy, and speech-language pathology services provided to beneficiaries with TBI. For beneficiaries with TBI, TRICARE covers rehabilitative services provided by physicians, psychologists, physical therapists, occupational therapists, and speech-language pathologists.

TRICARE covers medical treatments that are proven safe and effective. Some treatments provided by certain cognitive rehabilitation programs haven’t been fully proven as effective stand-alone therapy for TBI. Some cognitive rehabilitation services may be individually covered for other retirees, active duty family members, and retiree family members, based on both medical-necessity determination and .

Type of Therapy

 Area of Cognitive Impairment Specific Examples
Attention process training Attention Letter cancellation tasks with distracting noise in background
Error management training
  • Attention
  • Memory
  • Executive functioning
  • Social pragmatics 
 Individual and group self-awareness training
Emotional regulation training
  • Attention
  • Memory
  • Executive functioning
  • Social pragmatics
     
 Anger management training
External cuing 
  • Attention
  • Memory
  • Executive functioning
  • Supervised living
  • BlackBerry
  • Cell phone
  • PDA
Integrated use 
  • Attention
  • Memory
  • Executive functioning
  • Social pragmatics
  
Memory notebook 
  • Attention
  • Memory
  • Executive functioning 
  • Prosthetics
  • PDA 
Problem-solving training 
  • Attention
  • Memory
  • Executive functioning
  • Social pragmatics 
  • Internal problem-solving
  • Internal dialogue
Social communications skills training groups 
  • Executive functioning
  • Social pragmatics

 

 Group cognitive therapy
Various mnemonic techniques Memory 
  • Story method
  • Acronyms
  • Sentence/acrostics
  • Method of loci
  • Chunking
  • Repetition
Visual imagery mnemonics Memory Imagery-based training
Working memory training  Attention  Completing two cognitive tasks simultaneously 

See Also

Disclaimer:

This list of covered services isn’t all-inclusive. TRICARE covers services that are and considered proven. Some services have special rules or limits, and some services are excluded. Learn how a benefit becomes covered.

Last Updated 9/17/2024