Life Care Planning for Traumatic Brain Injury Patients: Expert Guidance and Legal Benefits

An individual who has suffered a traumatic brain injury should consider life care planning to get an accurate estimate of future needs and expenses. Having highly qualified life care planning expert witness can also immensely benefit a lawsuit in which an injured individual is suing those responsible for the injury. A certified  life care planner (CLCP) can especially bring additional unique benefits to a case.

What is a Life Care Plan?

A life care plan is an extensive document created by an expert who has evaluated a person with a catastrophic or chronic health condition. It outlines the individual’s medical needs, therapy needs, environmental needs, transportation needs, equipment and supplies needs, and pharmaceutical needs. The life care plan also lays out the cost of these needs and projected expenses for the individual’s lifetime.

The expert creating the plan must clearly describe the methodology used to make the plan, and may only make recommendations for individual plan components with the necessary medical foundation and experience.

What is a Certified Life Care Planner?

A CLCP will use his or her extensive experience in the field of Rehabilitation and case management to guide an assessment of a evaluee  with a brain injury.  He or she may make recommendations in the broad scope of a rehabilitation counselor, making it possible to thoroughly address several particular aspects of medical needs in a life care plan.

A Rehabilitation Professional’s extensive experience empowers CLCPs to assess an individual’s responses to injury and illness, and write a report detailing the evaluee’s long term medical needs.  Rehabilitation Counselors write life care plans  with the necessary items they will need over their lifetime.

A CLCP develops a plan of care for the duration of an individual’s life expectancy based on a personal assessment and published evidence-based guidelines. He or she will look at all medical records from every provider and speak to the treating physicians and therapists if possible to best understand the injury, initial treatment, response to treatment, treatment goals, anticipated evaluations, and possible complications.

A CLCP’s experience and attention make them a valuable life care planning expert witness. Their highly individualized life care plans are a critical tool in the process to establish what a brain injury patient will have to deal with for the rest of their life. While diagnostic studies alone can help make reasonably good assessment as to the probable effect an injury will have on a brain area, rehabilitation professionals know that scans alone cannot predict all long-term needs. For this reason, the life care planner’s expertise in rehabilitation, individual assessment, and planning are extremely important.

Occupational Assessment Services, Inc. (OAS) has extensive experience creating life care plans for injured plaintiffs in a variety of circumstances.  Contact  OAS at 800-292-1919 to discuss how we can help with your life care plan.