Chapter 9: Costing Framework

When conducting costing research for a life care plan, it is essential to understand the primary goals of life care planning are to maximize an individual's functional status following an injury or disability, prevent secondary complications, and promote overall quality of life.Life care plans are needs-based documents, derived from clinical evidence and functional assessment of the evaluee, rather than from limitations imposed by specific payors, insurance benefits, or collateral payment sources (Deutsch & Reid, 2004).A fundamental component of the life care planning process is the systematic determination of costs for the products and services recommended to address the evaluee's identified medical, functional, and support needs.At the 2022 Life Care Planning Summit, life care planners identified the need for a Costing Framework to clarify the variables and methods used in the costing process, along with the strengths and considerations when using those methods (Johnson et al., 2023).In response, a Costing Framework is presented in this chapter.As described in Chapter 1, life care planners are guided by established Standards of Practice (International Academy of Life Care Planners [IALCP], 2022; American Association of Nurse Life Care Planners [AANLCP], 2015; American Academy of Physician Life Care Planners [AAPLCP], 2025) as well as Consensus and Majority Statements developed through biennial life care planning summits (Johnson et al., 2018(Johnson et al., , 2025) ) to ensure consistent, valid, and reliable approaches to obtaining life care plan costs.The Costing Framework is built upon this foundation as well as data regarding costing techniques gathered through the 2021 Costing Technique Survey (conducted as a precursor to the 2022 Life Care Planning Summit) and data obtained at the 2022 Summit.A consensus project defining primary cost sources, accompanied by an educational graphic, was presented in Chapter 4, and analysis of the data was provided in Chapters 5, 6, 7, and 8.This framework project offers a conceptual structure of common themes, costing techniques, and key considerations intended to support the life care planning cost research process.To further assist life care planners, a review of costing related resources was presented in Chapter 3.This information has also been integrated into the Costing Framework.Guided by their education, training, and experience, life care planners apply clinical judgment (Choppa et al., 2004) that requires flexibility, as cost research methods may vary across situations.The Costing Framework was not designed to be prescriptive, but rather to serve as a tool that synthesizes data to identify commonly used costing techniques to provide education and