A Life Care Plan is a professionally written, dynamic plan discussing future medical costs, most commonly used for those with “catastrophic” injuries. A typical Life Care Plan takes 40-60 hours to collect all of the appropriate information, interview medical providers and other professionals, collaborate with the patient and their family members, complete appropriate research and then actually write the plan.
Life Care Plans typically include a narrative of the related events up to and including the catastrophic event, current care, and cost of future therapies, medications, equipment, treatments and other items as appropriate. All financial figures are created in terms of “today’s numbers”, and a economist may be needed to speak to inflation rates. The reports can be quite lengthy, and very involved.
Determining costs is a scientific process where the Life Care Planner must determine the appropriate codes, research the costs for each code and then apply to the plan. All numbers are reported using the “Usual, Reasonable and Customary” costs, not Medicare, Insurance or Workers’ Compensation fees as there is no guarantee that those contracts will be in place at a later date.
The Life Care Planner may be deposed or may testify at trial.
The key to professional Life Care Planning is use of a scientific, reproducible methodology which supports a lack of bias, guesswork and “vested interest” in the outcome. A great Life Care Planner has the injured party’s interests in mind, not the interests of either side of the courtroom. Life Care Planners walk a fine line between being the Life Care Planner and the Case Manager. Until a case is complete, their focus should be completion of the plan, but they may be contracted in a role of a Case Manager later on. This becomes somewhat of a challenge, as the Plan may change as the injured party’s condition changes.
