Life care plan costing applied to traumatic brain injury litigation: methodology, deliverables, and case-specific considerations.
A brain injury life care plan is dominated by attendant care and supervision, therapy, medication, and case management over a lifetime, and its present value is highly sensitive to the daily hours of paid help the plan specifies and the life expectancy applied. The economist carries each item forward with the medical cost growth appropriate to its category, discounts the stream over the life expectancy the medical evidence supports, and presents the total under alternative supervision levels when the plan or the record offers more than one. Every valued item ties back to the plan so counsel and the plan's author can confirm that the valuation reconciles.
Reduction of a life care plan's line items to a single present value. The plan's items, frequencies, durations, and unit costs are carried forward with medical cost growth appropriate to each category, then discounted over the applicable life expectancy. Plan authorship stays with the life care planner; our role is the economic translation of the plan into a damages figure that reconciles with the plan and can be examined item by item.
The claim consists of lost earnings and earning capacity, often a total loss when the person cannot return to competitive work or a partial loss when they can work only with supports or at a lower level; lost fringe benefits; the replacement cost of household services, including the supervision and management of daily affairs that family members now provide; and the present value of the care plan, which in serious injury includes attendant care, therapy, medication, and case management over a lifetime. The drivers are the earnings history, the neuropsychological and work-capacity opinions in the record, and a life care plan that specifies each item's frequency and duration.
We issue the final report and provide deposition and trial testimony, rebuttal of opposing present value opinions, and revaluation when the plan is updated.
Each item's description, frequency, duration, start and end ages, and current unit cost, with the attendant care and supervision hours stated by level of service. Items with a range of frequencies are valued at each end of the range, and the report shows which items drive the total.
The economist presents the present value under each expectancy in the record. Because attendant care runs for life, the total moves materially with the horizon, and showing each result lets the fact finder attach the number to the finding it makes.
Request a consultation on Life Care Plan Costing or call (201) 343-0700. Plaintiff and defense counsel.