Massachusetts Life Care Planning Services

A Massachusetts life care plan answers two questions for the forum: what care the injured person will need for the rest of his or her life, and what that care will cost in the person's own area. It is built from the medical record and the recommendations of the treating providers and lists the medical follow-up, therapy, medication, testing, equipment, supplies, home and vehicle modification, transportation, personal care attendants and case management the person will need, with the procedures the record anticipates, and it states for each item how often it recurs, for how long and what its price rests on. Every line is written to trace to the record or to a published life care planning standard, and to be read by the forensic economist who reduces it to present value.

Life care evidence is offered in Massachusetts wherever the cost of future care is disputed. The Superior Court's page describes a general jurisdiction trial court whose justices hold court in every county, and it hears the personal injury and medical malpractice actions in which a plan is served; the same page adds that this court alone may convene medical malpractice tribunals. The Probate and Family Court's page lists divorce, child support, guardianship and conservatorship among the matters it hears, and a plan is offered there when the future care of a child or an adult with a disability is part of the support or guardianship question. In the federal system the District of Massachusetts lists divisional offices in Boston, Worcester and Springfield, with the John Joseph Moakley U.S. Courthouse in Boston, and federal matters with a future care claim proceed there. The Massachusetts Appeals Court reviews the trial courts' decisions, and the Supreme Judicial Court sits above it as the highest appellate court in the Commonwealth.

Before the Department of Industrial Accidents, which runs the state's workers' compensation system from its Boston main office and four other offices, the plan speaks to an injured worker's contested future medical treatment and its cost. Its page on the dispute resolution steps lists conciliation, then a conference, then a hearing, calls the hearing the trial phase where witnesses testify, and sends an appeal from the hearing to its Reviewing Board; the Appeals Court's page counts Industrial Accident Board decisions among the appeals it hears. A plan for a claim at the conference stage summarizes the contested treatment and its basis; a plan for the hearing carries every item with its source, because the hearing is where the planner is examined on it.

Plans are prepared by the roster's certified life care planners with physician support for the items within the scope of medical practice; the planners and the physicians behind each plan are named, with their credentials, on the life care planning practice page. The work runs in one order: the medical record is read and a chronology of diagnoses, treatment and present status is built; the evaluee and family are interviewed and the treating providers consulted where the assignment calls for it; the future needs are projected to published life care planning standards; each item is priced; and the written plan documents the basis for every recommendation. When new records arrive or the clinical picture changes, the plan is revised and served again.

Pricing follows the person's region: each item is priced from provider and supplier pricing and published fee data for the area in which the person lives, and the plan names the region it priced to, so that a therapy visit or an hour of attendant care can be compared with what that market charges. The written plan is organized to the disclosure requirements of the forum in which the matter is pending, and deposition and trial testimony on it follow the case calendar. Attorneys confirm the governing rule for their case. KWVRS is headquartered in Hackensack, New Jersey, and maintains a Richmond, Virginia office. Plaintiff and defense.