Eight months after the crash on Man o’ War Boulevard, a woman you’ve never met shows up at your Lexington house with a tape measure. She measures the bathroom doorway, which is too narrow for your husband’s wheelchair. She counts the three steps up to the porch.
Then she sits at your kitchen table and asks who helps him out of bed, how long it takes, and what happens on the days you work.
She’s a life care planner, and her notes will likely produce the largest number in your case. A settlement or verdict comes as one payment, even though it has to cover decades of care. When a Lexington catastrophic injury lawyer has to prove what that care will cost, a life care plan is usually how it’s done.
Here’s how the plan gets built, how an economist prices it, and what happens when the insurer brings a plan of its own.
Why a Life Care Plan Starts With a Tape Measure
A life care plan is a written projection of the care, equipment, and daily help an injured person will need for life. Each item in the plan comes with a price. The profession’s standards describe it as a living document built on assessment and research. In a lawsuit, it’s the proof behind future medical expenses. In a catastrophic injury case, that number can be far larger than every bill so far.
Many plans are written by a certified life care planner. The International Commission on Health Care Certification grants that credential to licensed health care professionals, such as nurses and rehabilitation counselors, who have at least 120 hours of specialized training and three years of field experience. Each recommendation needs a foundation, and items outside the planner’s field, like a future surgery, come from your husband’s doctors.
The home visit is part of her assessment of his long-term care needs. It shows her what his day looks like, from the transfer out of bed to the three steps he can’t climb.
Every Line in the Plan Answers Four Questions
Each item states what he needs, how often, for how long, and what it costs to be where you live. The standards call for local prices from sources anyone can check, so a home health aide gets priced at Lexington rates. A typical plan covers categories like these:
- Attendant or home health care, priced by the hour
- Physical, occupational, and other therapy
- Medications and medical supplies
- Doctor visits, tests, and future surgeries
- Wheelchairs, beds, and other equipment
- Home modifications, from a wider doorway to a ramp
- An accessible vehicle or other transportation
Equipment wears out, and the plan has to account for that. Medicare treats five years as the minimum useful life of a wheelchair and other durable medical equipment. Over the next 35 years, that could mean seven chairs.
Put together, those lines become a medical cost projection for every year he’s expected to live.
The Economist Turns Decades of Care Into One Figure
A planner prices everything in today’s dollars. That’s where the economist takes over.
Let’s say the plan calls for a home health aide 30 hours a week. Multiplying this year’s rate by 35 years leaves out two questions. The price of that care will keep changing, and the jury awards the money now, where it can earn interest before it’s spent.
So, the economics adjusts in two directions. Projected healthcare costs get a growth rate for each category, since nursing, drugs, and equipment can rise at different rates. Federal actuaries expect national health spending to grow about 5.4 percent a year through 2034, faster than the overall economy. Then the total gets discounted to present value, the lump sum that would cover each year’s care if invested conservatively.
Some economists conclude that growth and interest roughly cancel each other out, but that’s a conclusion they have to support, and forensic economist testimony gets cross-examined on exactly those assumptions.
Kentucky Trials Come Down to Whose Plan the Jury Believes
Kentucky’s constitution bars the legislature from limiting what an injured person can recover, so no statutory cap trims catastrophic injury damages here. A procedural rule can, though. When the defense asks in written interrogatories how much you’re claiming, Kentucky’s civil rules cap your claim at the last amount stated in your answers unless the judge allows an update.
The plan generally needs to be finished, and those answers brought up to date, before trial.
Expect the insurance company to hire its own planner. A defense plan can assume fewer therapy visits, free care from family, cheaper equipment, or a shorter life expectancy, and each assumption shrinks the total.
That planner is doing the job she was hired to do, and the jury hears both plans before deciding which one fits the man it has watched in the courtroom. That’s why the home visit, the doctors’ support, and the price behind every line carry so much weight.
Get the Plan Built Before the Numbers Are Locked In
Your husband’s care won’t end when the case does, and a settlement that runs dry in year 12 leaves your family paying for the rest. At Peterson Law Office, our attorneys work with life care planners, medical specialists, vocational experts, and economists to price the care a catastrophic injury requires, and we build that number into the case early so that it counts long past year 12.
If someone you love was seriously injured anywhere in Kentucky, reach out to our firm for a free consultation, and you won’t owe a fee unless we win.
Before the planner’s visit, keep a week’s log of every time someone helps him, from the first transfer out of bed to the last medication at night, so she prices the care he gets.