Life Care Planning
What is a Life Care Plan?
A Life Care Plan is a comprehensive document that outlines an individual’s current and future healthcare needs following a catastrophic injury or chronic medical condition. It includes estimated costs, treatment schedules, medications, medical equipment, and other services that are reasonably necessary to support long-term care.
Life Care Plans can also be valuable in divorce proceedings, contested will cases, and other legal matters where future medical needs and costs must be evaluated.
The goal of a Life Care Plan is to identify the care and interventions needed to prevent or manage health issues, maximize independence, and improve quality of life. Because healthcare needs can change over time, each Life Care Plan is a living document that is reviewed and updated as needed.
Life Care Planners function within their individual professional scope of practice and, when applicable, incorporate opinions arrived at collaboratively with various healthcare providers including but not limited to healthcare workers, doctors, prosthetists, and durable medical equipment providers. Each professional providing input to the plan operates within the specific standards of their practice and discipline to ensure that there is direction, accountability, and acceptance with community and professional ethics.
The Purpose of a Life Care Plan
The Life Care Plan of the client is utilized for the person who is the subject of the Life Care Plan. The purpose is to assist in treatment while developing an appropriate plan of prevention and to achieve restoration of health by determining interventions to detect, prevent, and manage health problems and risk factors. The Life Care Plan promotes optimum function, independence, and a sense of well-being to achieve expected outcomes safely and efficiently.
The Life Care Plan should develop accurate, timely, cost information, specificity, and service details that can be utilized by the client and involved parties. This will help determine the actual course of events, projected costs, and amounts of money that will need to be set aside to care for this individual.
A thorough long-term Life Care Plan includes several aspects. The process includes:
1.
Assessment through a comprehensive review of medical records;
2.
Utilization of clinical judgment, knowledge, and research about an individual, family or community response to actual or potential health problems and life processes providing the basis for selection of interventions to achieve outcomes;
3.
Data analysis to determine expected outcomes and to develop a plan that prescribes strategies and alternatives to attain expected outcomes;
4.
Collaboration as necessary with other healthcare providers and physicians which may also include physical and occupational assessment, vocational assessment, and functional capacity evaluation;
5.
Projected costs of projected future prescribed strategies and alternatives of different services and needs.
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Common Injuries that Require a Life Care Plan
For a detailed list of common injuries or chronic healthcare needs that require a Life Care Plan, see our resources page.
Components of a Life Care Plan
What is a Life Care Plan?
A Life Care Plan is a holistic interdisciplinary team approach of specialists, which produces a document that projects future costs of medical goods and services, modality support, medications and other necessary services for a catastrophically injured or ill patient. The experts involved may…
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