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Certified Life Care Planner (CLCP)

KWVRS Editorial Team. Last updated .

The CLCP is the recognized certification for life care planners. Scope includes development of comprehensive, individualized life care plans for individuals with catastrophic injuries or chronic conditions, with projected cost and frequency of all recommended care.

Issued by

International Commission on Health Care Certification

Requirements

  • Qualifying healthcare or rehabilitation credential (e.g., RN, OT, PT, CRC, physician)
  • Completion of a 120-hour post-graduate life care planning training program
  • Documented case experience under supervision
  • Passing score on the CLCP examination
  • Continuing education and renewal every five years

Admissibility

CLCP methodology follows published standards (IALCP, IARP Life Care Planning Section) and has been accepted in both state and federal courts when grounded in treating-team recommendations, local cost data, and peer-reviewed duration literature.

Vetting a CLCP for your matter

The CLCP establishes that the holder entered life care planning as a qualified health care professional, licensed or certified for the profession in the holder's state, with at least three years of field experience in the five years before applying, completed a post-graduate training program in the discipline that closes with a life care plan prepared for review by an approved program or the commission, and passed the certifying commission's examination, and that the holder renews on a five-year cycle with continuing education. What it certifies is competence in the method: identifying the categories of future care an injury or condition requires, setting the frequency and duration of each item from the treating team's recommendations and the published literature, and pricing each item from cost data matched to the evaluee's geography. The certification is issued by a private commission rather than a state board, and it is held by nurses, therapists, counselors and physicians alike.

The credential does not establish clinical authority beyond the holder's underlying license. A nurse planner and a physician planner both hold the CLCP, but the scope within which each may recommend an item of care is set by the license, not the certification, and a defensible plan shows which items rest on a treating physician's recommendation and which fall within the planner's own scope. Nor does the CLCP establish that the holder has written plans for litigation, defended a plan at deposition, or reviewed an opposing plan; those are matters of experience the credential is silent on, and a planner whose practice has been in case management or discharge planning may hold it without any of them.

Counsel vetting a CLCP usually asks whether the certification is current and which underlying license the holder practices under; how the holder obtains treating-team input and what happens when a treating physician declines to recommend an item; how costs are sourced, whether the sources are local to the venue, and how old they are; whether the holder has prepared plans on both the plaintiff and the defense side and has reviewed opposing plans; whether the holder's plans have been limited or excluded, and on what ground; and whether the holder will interview the evaluee or work from the records and the treating team's input alone.

The CLCP pairs with testimony experience because a life care plan is examined item by item at deposition, and a planner who has been through that examination structures the plan so that every line carries its recommendation, its frequency, its duration and its cost source. A planner with the credential but no testimony record may produce a clinically sound plan that is difficult to defend; a planner with both produces a plan built to be cross-examined. When the matter needs a future medical cost figure without a full plan, or a chronology of past care rather than a projection of future care, the comparisons below describe the alternatives and when each is the better fit.

Life care plans at KWVRS follow the published standards of the profession, and each plan states its sources and their dates so that counsel can vet the plan the same way counsel vets the planner. The planner who authored the plan is the one who defends it, and the plan's narrative identifies the treating recommendations it implements so that the line between the physician's scope and the planner's own is visible on the face of the document.

Compare

KWVRS experts holding CLCP

CLCP by state

Frequently Asked Questions

Does a CLCP require a prior clinical credential?

Yes. CLCP candidates must hold a qualifying healthcare or rehabilitation credential (such as RN, OT, PT, CRC, or physician) before pursuing the CLCP certification.

How is the life care planning methodology standardized?

Practice standards are published by IALCP and IARP's Life Care Planning Section, with methodology following a consensus approach that integrates treating team recommendations, peer-reviewed duration literature, and geographically matched cost data.

Can a CLCP testify on causation?

Causation opinions are generally provided by physicians. The CLCP projects the cost of care consistent with physician-supported recommendations and does not typically opine on causation.

References

  1. ICHCC - CLCP CertificationOrganization
  2. IALCP Standards of PracticeOrganization
  3. IARP Life Care Planning SectionOrganization

Ready to Get Started on CLCP engagements?

Contact KWVRS to discuss scope, timing, and the deliverables appropriate to the matter. Plaintiff and defense.

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