Life Care Planner in Boston, MA

A life care plan for a Boston matter lists the care a catastrophically injured person will need for life and prices it to the person's own market. The plan is offered in the Suffolk County Superior Court, which the court system's location page places at the Suffolk County Courthouse on Pemberton Square, in personal injury actions and medical malpractice actions for which KWVRS's planners are retained; the Superior Court's own page records that this court alone may convene a medical malpractice tribunal, and describes nothing further about it. A plan in a federal action goes to the District of Massachusetts' Boston divisional office, labeled Eastern on the court's page, at the Moakley Courthouse. Appeals go to the Appeals Court and the Supreme Judicial Court at the John Adams Courthouse, also on Pemberton Square.

When an injured Boston worker's future medical treatment is contested, the plan goes before the Department of Industrial Accidents, whose page puts its main office at Lafayette City Center in Boston. The dispute steps page runs from an informal conciliation to a conference, then to a hearing it calls the trial phase, where witnesses are called, and on to the Reviewing Board. For the conference KWVRS prepares a summary of the disputed treatment and its basis in the record; for the hearing, where witnesses are called and the planner may be among them, a complete plan with the frequency, duration and cost basis of every item. Whether an item is compensable is for the judge and counsel.

Pricing is local: each line is quoted from Boston-area providers and suppliers or taken from fee data published for the region, and the hourly rates for home health aides, attendant care and case management are compared with the wages the Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics program publishes for the Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH area. Price, frequency and duration stay separate figures, so an opposing planner can test each, and the finished plan goes to the forensic economist for present value.

Each plan is the work of a certified life care planner on the KWVRS roster, with a physician's support for the medical items, and the practice page names them. The record is reduced to a chronology; the evaluee and the family are interviewed and treating providers consulted when the assignment allows; future needs are measured against published life care planning standards and priced to the Boston area; and every recommendation is documented to its basis and updated as records arrive. Plaintiff and defense counsel get the same plan, built on one record and written to the forum's expert disclosure practice. KWVRS works with attorneys nationwide from its New Jersey, Virginia and Rhode Island offices. Attorneys confirm the governing rule for their case.