As a Nurse Life Care Planner, it is important to understand the purpose of a Life Care Plan, i.e., “Will it be used by a Case Manager in a clinical environment?” “Will it be used for budget planning?” In the mid-1970s, Paul Deutsch first identified the term “Life Care Planning” by referring to it as future needs, as a tool to project the costs of medical care in the litigation environment . The focus of this Methodology Memo is to briefly address preparation of Life Care Plans in the litigation environment.
The AANLCP Core Curriculum for Nurse Life Care Planning states that, The potential for across-the-board tort reform could lead to capping the damages in medical malpractice, liability, and personal injury cases. This will warrant the need for nurse life care planners to provide appropriate lifetime healthcare dollar amounts to care for injured persons and give direction to their future care needs. Attorneys will likely come to depend on nurse life care planners to provide direction as to what the injured person needs so that cases can be resolved appropriately.
As also stated in the AANLCP Core Curriculum for Nurse Life Care Planning, The nurse life care planner provides for the needs of an individual throughout the health care continuum, across multiple settings, and throughout the lifetime. The individualized assessment and diagnoses of that particularperson’s response to disability or illness as well as the potential health risks stemming from that disability or illness is the foundation for the care plan. It is designed to minimize risk and promote function over the lifetime, while anticipating the effect of aging and the evolution of the disability or illness itself on that individual’s future needs.
When a life care plan expert allows the client to dictate that all future care is to be included in the healthcare dollar amount in a Life Care Plan for litigation purposes, methodology is misapplied and ethics are compromised. In summary, the client does not dictate Life Care Planning methodology or what future care needs should or should not be included in the healthcare dollar amount in a Life Care Plan for litigation purposes, including the addition of the healthcare dollar amount for future needs that the client would have needed regardless of the illness or injury being litigated. As noted in the AANLCP Code of Ethics and Conduct, “all nurse life care planners have an ethical obligation to practice with integrity, demonstrate competency, and have accountability” . The obligation of a life care plan expert to uphold the code of ethics and follow life care planning methodology applies no matter who the client happens to be or the purpose of the life care plan.
American Association of Nurse Life Care Planners. (2013). A Core Curriculum for Nurse Life Care Planning, p. 3.
American Association of Nurse Life Care Planners. (2013). A Core Curriculum for Nurse Life Care Planning, p. 18.
American Association of Nurse Life Care Planners. (2013). A Core Curriculum for Nurse Life Care Planning, p. 28.
American Association of Nurse Life Care Planners. (2013). A Core Curriculum for Nurse Life Care Planning, p. 13.
