Life Care Plan Valuation

In catastrophic personal injury cases (e.g. cases involving spinal cord injury), a life care plan is sometimes prepared detailing the anticipated future medical and rehabilitation needs (and sometimes other needs such as transportation and vocational/educational services) with associated costs arising due to the injury or incident of interest.  A life care plan valuation involves the estimation of the future growth of these costs based on the change in price of relevant medical care services (including professional services, hospital and related services, and health insurance) and medical care commodities (including medicinal drugs and medical equipment and supplies) as well as any other necessary services (e.g. transportation services).  The valuation process then involves the application of one or more appropriate interest rates to discount these future estimated costs to present value.