Life Care Planner Deposition Outline
Deposing a life care planner rewards preparation more than most expert depositions, because the material is finite and testable. The plan is a written document with a fixed number of line items, and every one of them rests on assumptions you can identify in advance.
The mistake is treating it as a general credibility examination. You are not trying to establish that the planner is unqualified. You are trying to establish that specific line items lack support, and that the pattern of unsupported items calls the total into question.
What follows is an outline organized by where plans actually fail, not by the order the plan is written in. For the scope of what a planner can and cannot say on the stand, see what does a life care planner testify to.
Before the deposition
Build the physician recommendation list described in how to challenge a life care plan. Every forward looking treatment recommendation in the record, with source and date. Without this you are asking questions rather than confronting the witness with documents.
Request the planner's file in advance, including cost source documentation, notes from any provider contact, and any drafts. What is missing from the file is often more useful than what is in it.
Identify your ten highest value line items by total projected cost. You will not get through the whole plan, and you should not try. Depth on the items that move the number is worth more than coverage. The broader sequence for expert witness deposition preparation still applies, but the plan itself supplies the roadmap.
Qualifications and scope
Establish the certification and what it required. Establish the underlying professional license and what it permits. Establish, and this is the point of the section, that the planner is not a physician and does not make treatment recommendations.
Get a clear concession on the record that the planner's role is to cost out care that physicians have recommended. Planners will generally agree with this readily because it is accurate. That concession is the foundation for everything that follows, and it is much harder to walk back later than to give in the abstract. For how qualification attaches to the specific opinion, see qualifying an expert witness.
Establish what the planner did not do. Did not examine the client medically, did not diagnose, did not determine prognosis, did not calculate present value.
Methodology
Walk through the process in sequence. What records were reviewed and whether the review was complete. Which providers were contacted, when, and how the contact was documented. What was done when the record was silent on an item.
Ask directly what standard or protocol the planner follows and whether they can name it. A planner who describes a documented methodology is in good shape. One who describes their general approach is not.
Ask whether the plan was reviewed by anyone else in their practice, and whether anyone other than the witness performed underlying work. In larger practices this is frequently yes, and the person who built the plan is not always the person testifying.
Line item support
This is the core of the deposition and where the time should go.
For each of your target items, the sequence is the same. What is this item. Who recommended it. Where in the record does that appear. Can you show me.
When the answer is that no physician recommended it, follow up. Who determined the client needs this. What qualifies you to make that determination. Did you contact a provider about it. Is that contact documented in your file.
Repeat this across enough items that the pattern is established. Three unsupported items in a plan of two hundred is noise. Fifteen out of your twenty highest value items is a different document. That pattern is also the substance of a life care plan rebuttal expert report.
Frequency and duration
Take these separately from the item itself, because a planner who has conceded the item is supported will often defend the frequency less carefully.
The physician wrote six month follow up. Your plan projects quarterly. What is the basis for the difference.
This care was recommended during the recovery period. Your plan projects it for the full life expectancy. What is the basis for extending it.
These are documentary confrontations and they do not require the planner to agree with you. The record says what it says.
Cost basis
Ask what source each cost figure came from and whether the documentation is in the file. The sources that hold up and the ones that do not are covered in life care plan cost calculation expert.
Ask specifically whether the figures are billed charges, allowed amounts, or paid amounts, and why that choice was made. Follow with whether the planner knows what the client's own care has actually cost to date, and whether they compared their projected figures to it.
Ask when the cost data was compiled and whether it has been updated since.
Ask how geographic adjustment was handled and whether the client is expected to receive care in the market the data reflects.
Equipment replacement
Ask the basis for each replacement interval. Ask whether the planner consulted manufacturer useful life specifications. Ask whether they are aware of the Medicare reasonable useful lifetime standard for the item and how their interval compares.
These questions have documentary answers that do not depend on the witness cooperating.
Life expectancy and present value
Establish what life expectancy assumption the plan uses and where it came from. Establish that the planner did not independently determine it and is not qualified to.
Establish that the figures are in current dollars and that the planner applied no inflation adjustment. If they did apply one, that is worth developing carefully, because it may create a double counting problem with the forensic economist.
Closing the scope
End where you began. Confirm the planner is not offering an opinion on causation, is not offering an opinion on medical necessity independent of physician recommendation, and is not offering an opinion on life expectancy or present value.
If the plan contains items that cross those lines, you now have both the concession and the contradiction on the same record.