Life Care Planning

A Life Care Plan is a tool used for the purpose of estimating medical and non-medical needs of the person with a catastrophic injury. It is a tool used to project costs and frequency of needed goods and services over an estimated life span.

Life Care Planning allows adjusters and attorneys to plan for the future with their disabled individuals the knowledge of when and how the expenditures for care will be allocated, allowing for financial planning and the setting of reserves from provider sources. Life Care Plans also provide an excellent tool for claim settlement negotiations.

Highly qualified nurse professionals with VP Medical Consulting are able to accurately establish and quantify medical damages resulting from an injury. We provide a detailed outline of the current and future medical, vocational, educational and psychosocial needs of a catastrophically ill or injured individual, while projecting the related costs annually or over the individual’s life expectancy.

Nurse Life Care Planners provide the following:

• A comprehensive home visit assessment with the client and significant others to collect subjective and objective data.
• The team approach is applied with input from various Health Care Providers.

Additional Services

• Nursing assessment and diagnosis is based on data from observation, examinations, interviews and written records. 

• Estimating medical costs and non-medical needs of the person with a catastrophic injury. 

• Projected costs and frequency of needed goods and services over an estimated life span. 

• If needed, residential life time care cost analysis. 

• In-depth medical and nursing literature research that provide scientific foundation for all life care plans.

 The Nurse Practice Act and Nurse Life Care Planning

We at VP Medical Consulting believe a nurse is best suited as a Life Care Planner.  Nursing is a scientific discipline as well as a profession.  Registered nurses employ critical thinking to integrate objective data with knowledge gained from an assessment of the subjective experiences of patients.  Registered nurses use this critical thinking process to apply the best available evidence and research data to the processes of diagnosis and treatment.  Nurses continually evaluate quality and effectiveness of nursing practice and seek to optimize outcomes.

Furthermore, Nurse Life Care Planners are governed by the Scope of the Nurse Practice Act. The Nursing: Scope and Standards of Practice delineates the professional responsibilities of all professional registered nurses engaged in nursing practice, regardless of the setting. 

An objective of the nursing profession is to achieve positive patient outcomes that maximize one’s quality of life across the entire life-span.  Registered Nurses facilitate the interdisciplinary and comprehensive care provided by healthcare professionals.  In other instances, nurses engage in consultation with other colleagues to inform decision-making and planning to meet patient care needs.

As Registered Nurses we can make nursing diagnosis and provide rational for each and every recommended service in a Life Care Plan further supporting the plan and preventing unnecessary scrutiny.