After a serious injury that leads to a permanent disability or long-term health impairment, you and your family will have many questions and concerns. How will I pay for ongoing medical treatment and rehabilitation? Will I be able to continue doing the type of work I was trained for? Or will I need to be retrained for a different type of work altogether? These questions and others can be answered by working with our lawyers and experts who can create an individualized life care plan for you.
A life care plan is a projection of the future costs for medical treatment and equipment, rehabilitation, and possible career retraining for a person who has had a catastrophic injury. To qualify for a life care plan, the injury must be so severe that the injured person’s ability to do day-to-day activities and/or perform the tasks of his prior job would be seriously affected. Catastrophic injuries include, but are not limited to, spinal cord injuries, the loss of a limb or the loss of use of a limb, severe back and neck injuries, loss of hearing or vision, and serious burn injuries.
The goal of a life care plan is to maximize the health and independence of the injured person, while providing the necessary follow-up medical care so that additional injury, complications, and disabilities do not occur. Our lawyers will sit down with the client and his or her family to discuss an individualized plan, based on client’s medical reports and the projected future costs for medical treatment and equipment in the client’s local geographic area. A vocational assessment is also done, addressing the effect that the injuries will have on the injured client’s ability to perform his or her prior job, and his or her earning capability. The transferability of skills from the prior job to possible alternate jobs, as well as retraining for a new job, may also be discussed.
Carefully and thoroughly assessing the impact that the injury has had and will continue to have on the client’s ability to earn, to provide for him- or herself, and the projected costs of ongoing medical care are key to determining the full economic damages in the case. That is why it is so important to speak with one of our attorneys about an individualized and accurate life care plan so that a realistic request for damages may be made on your behalf.
