Certified Life Care Planner (CLCP)

A certification. The International Commission on Health Care Certification (ICHCC) awards it to candidates who are licensed, certified or otherwise permitted by state law to practice a health care profession (a master's degree in a related health care field can stand in for a prior certification); that profession, not the CLCP, determines whether the holder may practice in it. The standards of practice for life care planners describe life care planning as a specialty practice over which a planner's own profession does not typically exercise authority, so counsel confirms the CLCP and the underlying license separately. The life care plan guide explains who prepares a plan and what it contains.

Ask for the certificate, which carries the expiration date the holder must renew by, and search ICHCC's public CLCP Listing by name or keyword, city, state, zip code or certificate number. Holders add and change their own entries after signing in, so an entry is not the commission's confirmation that the CLCP is current, and a missing name does not show a lapse. For a formal answer, counsel submits the commission's Certification Verification Form, and the commission replies with whether the person is certified, the certification and renewal dates, and any finding of a professional conduct or ethics violation with the principle violated. How to Evaluate an Opposing Life Care Plan covers the checks that come next, on the plan itself.

Not under the federal rule on expert testimony, which lets a witness qualify as an expert through knowledge, skill, experience, training or education; under it and the state rules that follow it, the court weighs the CLCP alongside the planner's license and planning experience and then tests the plan's foundation. What the certification adds, in ICHCC's terms, is consumer protection: by obtaining it the holder agrees to peer review, to research-based practice standards and ethical guidelines, and to discipline by the commission's board on a finding of inappropriate practice. Counsel also confirms whether the forum sets its own qualifications for a witness on future care.

Every five years. The certificant documents 80 continuing education units earned during the certification period, at least 8 of them in ethics and the rest in life care planning topics or the certificant's area of expertise, or renews by re-examination, an option ICHCC closes once the credential has expired. A certificant short of the 80 units who has completed and submitted 15 of them may apply for an extension of up to six months, and failing to renew by the expiration date on the certificate ends the holder's certified status.

Someone who meets ICHCC's definition of a qualified health care professional: a profession specific to the care, treatment or rehabilitation of people with significant disabilities, its academic requirements, and a license, certification or state legal mandate to practice it. Non-nurse candidates need at least a bachelor's degree and nurses at least a nursing diploma, and a master's degree in a related health care field removes the need for a primary certification or license. A technician or assistant license alone, such as a physical therapy assistant's or a licensed practical nurse's, does not qualify (a licensed or certified physician assistant does); nor do life care planning training, plan-writing experience or qualification as an expert witness without the professional background the definition requires.

Its 100 multiple-choice items cover 12 knowledge domains, among them care plan development, needs assessment, vocational consideration, litigation support, data collection, report preparation and records review, together with items ICHCC added on its own requirements, such as eligibility, the certification term and renewal. A subject matter expert committee arrived at the 12 by reducing the 16 domains a 2020 role and function study of life care planners identified. The litigation support domain includes consulting with plaintiff and with defense attorneys. Another 10 unscored field-test items may be included, candidates have 3 hours and 20 minutes and test online with a remote proctor or at a group administration held once a year in the spring, and they are told only whether they passed, never a score. The commission first gave the examination in March 1996.

Fair and impartial assessments of the person's functional capabilities and needs, plans researched for each category of need, and opinions formed without regard for personal reimbursement or a third-party payer's attitudes or biases. The code counts consulting services to the legal system among a CLCP's duties, and the commission's practice standards require a certificant working at a third party's request to clarify that relationship to everyone involved and to give unbiased, objective opinions regardless of referral source. The commission's handbook names defense counsel and plaintiff counsel alike among the consumers of life care planning services, and a rule violation can lead the commission to suspend or revoke the holder's use of the credential.

Not on medical causation by virtue of the certification. The standards of practice limit the recommendations a planner makes independently to the scope of the planner's own profession and, in forensic cases, have the planner consider pre-existing conditions and causally related needs, so a nurse, therapist or counselor planner relies on the physicians in the case for whether the injury caused a need for care. A physician planner's causation opinion rests on the medical license, not on the CLCP, and the life care plan development method shows where physician support enters a plan.