A life care planner may be either a nurse or a physician. It is probably wiser to use a physician for this purpose since they can diagnose and recommend treatment. A nurse may not be able to do that by statute.
The benefit of using a life care planner is that they can set forth an itemization as to what the cost is of future care. In particular the plaintiff may need a number of personal care items. A life care planner can itemize what those are and state what the cost is. The life care planner is relying on what the treating doctor says the needs and disabilities are.
You then need an economist to project what the cost of living adjustments are for those items.
The life care planner sets forth in concrete numbers what that life care is going to cost. This includes such things as having a personal attendant, having assistance with activities of daily living and a host of other things.
Life Care Planner Personal Injury-Defense Request for Exam
Sometimes what the defense will do in a personal injury case is to request that their own life care planner be allowed to interview the plaintiff. This probably should be objected to on a number of grounds:
- It is really just another opportunity for the defense to depose the plaintiff without counsel being present;
- it is not a physical or mental examination as contemplated by Rule 4:10;
- if the plaintiff has already submitted to a Rule 4:10 examination, then the life care planner examination is serving no purpose;
- if the life care planner is a nurse, then the nurse probably cannot diagnose or recommend treatment and therefore the examination is serving no purpose;
- if the life care planner is a physician, then that clearly is duplicative of any prior Rule 4:10 examination;
- there are a number of federal cases that focus on the fact that if there has already been one exam then the life care planner or vocational rehab person should be able to rely upon that and therefore there is no good cause established. What these cases do is they actually give some teeth to the good cause requirement.
In the case of Storms v. Lowe’s, 211 F.R.D. 296 (W.D. Va. 2003), the magistrate held that a request from the defense for a vocational assessment did not demonstrate good cause and therefore was not allowed. The same type of logic probably applies in regards to a life care planner.
