American Academy of
Physician Life Care Planners^™

Life Care Plans:
Substantiating Medical Damages in Personal Injury Torts

This paper addresses the challenge of substantiating medical damages in personal injury torts.

In order to effectively substantiate medical damages, three basic questions must be addressed:

1. What is a subject’s condition?
2. What medically-related goods and services does a subject’s condition require?
3. How much will those goods and services cost over time?

Life care plans are medical assessments that provide definitive answers to these questions, but only if their medical opinions are formulated by someone with requisite capacity, and only if their conclusions are supported by a proper methodological framework.

This paper presents a proper systematic framework for formulating and substantiating medical damages in personal injury torts.

The easy-to-follow framework presented in this document specifies a set of narrowly defined objectives, and consists of three imperative components:

1. A Foundation
2. A Superstructure
3. A Set of Mechanics

Only by fully understanding and properly applying these elements can one credibly substantiate medical damages.