Life Care Planning
A Life Care Plan is a systemic planning approach utilized to develop a fluid blueprint of anticipated services that are customized to an individual's healthcare needs over a lifespan. The individual healthcare needs may be due to catastrophic injury/illness, related to Worker's Compensation injury, medical malpractice, personal injury, and auto or product liability incidents.
Each plan becomes a guide for the patient, family, caregivers, and payer source to quantify all current and future medical care needs, including but not limited to frequency and duration of treatment, medical evaluations, diagnostic tests, equipment supplies, medication, home health care and transportation.
Each Life Care Planner (CLCP) completes a rigorous certification process through CHCC, Commission on Healthcare Certification, in addition to extensive history in the medical setting while maintaining an active nursing license.
A Life Care Plan is constructed through a variety of methods:
Collection of Data: Gathering of comprehensive medical, therapeutic, educational, vocational, biophysical and financial records.
Interview: Meeting with patient, family and caregivers in the residual setting using a structured interview process and disability-specific questionnaires. (If direct access is possible)
Consult: Meeting or otherwise consulting directly with the multidisciplinary treatment team and/or identified independent consultants regarding case-specific recommendations.
Assess: Analyzing data to assess consistency of treatment recommendations to standards of care and patient-specific needs. Assess needs for additional evaluations, consultations and treatments.
Plan: Applying a consistent methodology for gathering, validating, calculating and presenting data.
Collaborate: Working within areas of competency and consulting with other relevant experts to exchange information for formulation or opinions and providing plan foundation within appropriate standards of care.
Research: Applying an impartial, consistent, valid and reliable approach to data collection enabling an unbiased supported foundation for case-specific plan recommendations, technologies, replacement frequencies, durations, geographically specific private-pay costs for reasonable necessary goods and services and care options.
Evaluate: Reviewing Life Care Plan for internal consistencies, duplicative recommendations, appropriate offsets, comprehensiveness and ease of understanding.
Facilitate: Educating appropriate parties as to plan content to elicit cooperative participation in plan implementation.
Testify: Providing consultation and educational service to the triers of fact as to the case-specific costs of reasonable and necessary goods and services and other long-term care needs that will allow persons with disabilities to maximize their health and independence.