Ep. 45 - Medical Life Care Plans | After the Crash

Laura Lampton: The life care plan is based on the nursing process. So you’re making an assessment of an individual setting forth interventions for them to meet certain goals. The goal in a life care plan is to provide them services to improve their function and quality of life.

David Craig: I’m Attorney Dave Craig, managing partner and one of the founders of the law firm of Craig, Kelley & Faultless. I’ve represented people who have been seriously injured or who have had a family member killed in a semi or other big truck wreck for over 30 years. Following the wreck, their lives are chaos. Often, they don’t even know enough about the process to ask the right questions. It is my goal to empower you by providing you with the information you need to protect yourself and your family. Each and every episode I will interview top experts and professionals that are involved in truck wreck cases. This is After the Crash.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another episode of After the Crash. Today, it’s my distinct honor to invite our guest, Laura Lampton, who our law firm’s worked with for years. Laura is a registered nurse. She’s a certified rehabilitation registered nurse. She’s a certified nurse life care planner. She’s been in the nursing field for years. For what, 14 or longer years?

Laura Lampton: I’ve actually been a registered nurse for 39 years.

David Craig: 30 — no, that’s not possible. No, I’ve been a lawyer for 35 years, I look like it. You don’t look like you’ve been doing this for that long. She’s somebody who we work with, who law firms work with, both on the plaintiff and the defense side all over the country. She does what’s called future care plans, life care plans, and helps us determine the value of future care that a person with a catastrophic injury may need. That’s extraordinarily important because you only get one chance to settle a case or to go to get a jury verdict. So, one of the things clients ask me all the time is, “Well, how are we going to afford to take care of the future?” in these catastrophic cases. You have to provide that information.

Laura is one of those people who does that. She’s with a company called Vocational Economics Inc. The closest office to us, I believe, is down in Louisville, Kentucky, but they have offices around the country as well. They have experts that do a variety of different economics-type stuff, damage-type stuff, whether it’s lost future earnings, whether it’s future life care plans, a variety of different types of economic damages that one may need, household services, there’s a variety of things that they can provide and they have different experts within the company to provide that type of work. But today we’re going to talk about life care plans. So Laura, welcome to the episode.

Laura Lampton: Thank you very much.

David Craig: Tell us a little bit… First of all, you are a nurse. Tell us a little bit about why you went into nursing and then how did you transition to doing forensic work, which is helping people understand what the future care plans would be.

Laura Lampton: Growing up, I always knew I wanted to be in some kind of medical profession, ended up choosing nursing. Attended Bellarmine University in Louisville to obtain both an associate degree and a Bachelor of Science degree in nursing. Worked the majority of my hands-on nursing practice in rehabilitation nursing, both at Frazier Rehab Institute in Louisville and Southern Indiana Rehab Hospital in New Albany, Indiana. Helping individuals during the acute phase, following some type of catastrophic accident —whether that be a traumatic brain injury, a spinal cord injury, a stroke, or an amputation — to learn how to manage with those deficits and to try to be able to go back home with their family or independently if that was possible for them.
Along the line, I became interested in looking for something else that I could utilize this background training and experience that I had in rehabilitation and found life care planning, which was an easy transition for me because a life care plan is based on the nursing process. So you’re making an assessment of an individual setting forth interventions for them to meet certain goals. The goal in a life care plan is to provide them services to improve their function and quality of life.

David Craig: I think your background is somewhat unique and I think very helpful, I would imagine, in doing what you do today. Maybe talk a little bit about that. Because you actually had firsthand experience dealing with people with catastrophic injuries or conditions, and I would imagine that really is helpful to you.

Laura Lampton: It is, because with that background in rehabilitation nursing, especially if a case goes to a trial, then I can educate the jury on, “This is what these people are going to experience. This is what we teach them. This is how to help them manage certain problems.” So for example, somebody has a stroke, you can see that deficit, you can see if they’re paralyzed or if they have speech problems, but you don’t always realize that they might have swallowing problems because not only does the stroke affect the arm and the leg, but it affects that side of the throat. It can also affect their vision, not say one particular eye, but each half of that eye, whatever side the stroke is on, that half of their vision can be impaired where they can’t see.

So having that knowledge and experience to be able to educate the jury, also to educate that person and their family, whoever’s been injured, when I’m preparing a life care plan to say, “These are different things that you can utilize. There’s equipment out there,” if they haven’t been educated on that. There have been instances where I’ve dealt with a spinal cord injury and they’ve not been educated, unfortunately, on different complications that can occur. Because a spinal cord injury is not what will cause a person’s death, it’s the complications related to that spinal cord injury. So helping to be able to prevent them and including things in the life care plan to help them be able to do that.

David Craig: This podcast is designed for ordinary people who have found the misfortune, typically find themselves in a situation where a semi tractor trailer or a big truck or some other injury has caused a catastrophic injury. Now they’re listening to this to try to gain information. Because what I found out after doing this for over 35 years, is that people, you don’t even know what questions to ask. You have no idea. That’s where I think it’s really neat that you had so much rehab experience. It’s like truck wreck. I do truck wrecks day in and day out. There’s things that I see that I would’ve never seen had I not done these day in and day out. The actual experience and the knowledge come together and they help you do a better job. The same thing happens when a life care plan is put together. So people are out there listening, do I need a life care plan? What is a life care plan? Let’s just start off with just to kind of explains to folks what is a life care plan?

Laura Lampton: Again, as I said, following the nursing process, it is an assessment of that person, what their injuries are, what residual impairments that they have as a result of the accident or condition, and then what kind of future treatment are they going to need going forward, and how much does that cost? Everybody knows, medical care and treatment is becoming more and more expensive every day. Looking at the different aspects of the care and treatment that they’re going to require, how much is that going to cost over the rest of their life? Because they may get a few a hundred thousand dollars, but in reality, if they live another 20 or 30 years, that cost is going to continue to grow and those needs are going to continue to have to be met.

David Craig: I think that’s one thing that people have, they don’t know how much it’s going to cost and they have no idea. These plans that you put together are extraordinarily detailed. So, when we talk about life care plan, it’s not just superficial, it’s going to cost $10,000 this year or $100,000 this year. It breaks it down specifically as to every aspect that you can imagine is necessary, correct?

Laura Lampton: Sure. You’re dealing with medical care, those doctor visits that a person has to attend as a result of the accident. Some individuals, depending upon whether they have family to be able to help them, case management services, somebody to help them coordinate and navigate in the medical arena. Diagnostic testing, you don’t think that much about a blood test or an X-ray, but if those have to be repeated over their life expectancy, again, those add up. If there’s any kind of future surgery that might be recommended or might be beneficial to an individual.

Patients with spinal cord injuries or traumatic brain injuries, if they have a lot of spasticity or tightness in their extremities, there are pumps, baclofen pumps that can help treat that spasticity so that they’re not having to take a pill because the pill’s not controlling it, then they can put these pumps in that will help to help manage that. Or pain pumps to help manage if somebody’s got a chronic pain condition as a result of an injury. But again, you have to have the knowledge about those pumps and know that they’re not going to last the rest of a person’s life, they have to be replaced. So there’s repeat surgeries that will need to occur.

Therapy. Coming from a rehab background, therapy is a very important aspect in my life care plans because yes, a person may plateau in therapy where they’re not going to get any better. But again, one of the goals of a life care plan is you want to prevent harm. You want to prevent any kind of regression of a person’s condition. So yes, they’re not going to improve, but you want to prevent those complications.

Contractures, if they’re not exercising and not doing those home exercises, then, if you don’t use it, you’re going to lose it. So making sure that they’re being at least evaluated and having some periodic therapy to prevent any kind of regression or complications. Equipment. There’s lots of different equipment out there. Again, a wheelchair’s not going to last forever, so making sure that there’s appropriate replacement of those wheelchairs. In conjunction with that, the therapies, they can assess for equipment as well. So if you have that therapy built in, there may be something new that comes out that’s going to help this person be more functional.

It might sound crazy, but even down to disposable gloves or things that don’t seem like they’re going to cost that much: $10 a box of gloves and you might use two boxes a month over somebody’s life expectancy. It adds up. It may seem like a small item, but you’ve got to look at the big picture. Medications. If they require medications as part of their treatment, include those. The big one typically in a life care plan is going to be attendant care or home assistance. If somebody requires assistance to get showered, to get dressed. Some people, if they’ve had a traumatic brain injury, they don’t require physical assistance, but because of cognitive impairments or memory impairments, they’re not safe to be by themself. So making sure that the appropriate amount and the appropriate skilled care is included for that person.

The argument or pushback that I typically see from that is, “Well, the family’s taking care of them. Why can’t the family continue to take care of them?” Yes, the family is taking care of them. Most of the time it’s because they have no other option. There’s nobody else to be able to provide that care; they don’t have the finances to hire someone. Because even if you’re hiring a home health aide to come in, that can range from $25 to $30 an hour. If they’re in there for 12, 24 hours a day, those numbers add up and add up quickly. So providing them that service in the life care plan to let that family member who’s caring for them be, whether it’s a spouse, a child, a parent, let them be that person and not a caregiver. Oftentimes we see what they call caregiver burnout. Somebody that’s been providing care 24 hours a day for their family member, it’s tiring. So assuring that that service is in there.
In some situations, there are facilities that might be the best option for a person. Not necessarily a nursing home, but there are specific brain injury programs, for example, that are out there where they provide 24-hour care. It’s community living. It’s a home in the community where that person can go and stay and they’re supervised and receive the care and assistance that they need. Again, depending upon the person’s situation, is that going to be the best option for them to be in a residential brain injury or spinal cord injury program? Those are expensive. They can range from $700 a day to $2,000 a day depending upon the level of care that that person needs. But understanding and knowing the resources that are available helps me to be able to know that, “Okay, this person is going to, based on my experience clinically, this is what they’re going to need going forward.”

David Craig: I think from what you just said is a lot that people need to understand. These life care plans, they’re holistic. They deal with a whole lot of different issues, and you just touched on a lot of them. One of them is, let’s prevent future complications. Let’s put a plan together that keeps somebody from regressing, I think you said, and having complications. You talked about treating the existing conditions, so what is the existing condition? We have to make sure we have adequate care to get two of the doctors to have procedures, whatever’s necessary to treat whatever their current condition is and what any prospective or future conditions might be.
You talk about creating a safe environment. You talked about the different types of places. Somebody with a severe brain injury may not be able to stay at the same place that someone who’s been paralyzed is. I have had that. I’ve had a young female who had a severe brain injury and it affected her frontal lobe, so she acted differently than she did before the wreck. We had to take into consideration she couldn’t just go anywhere. That’s one of the things that you talked about, was creating a safe environment. Then I guess maximizing functional potential is another thing that you touched on. But to me, I’m always worried about my clients is that, okay, they’ve been injured because of no fault of their own, and we want to not only take care of them, but we want to maximize whatever their potential is. I think you talked about that’s where therapy can be very helpful and other types of future treatment that may come down the road, but that’s also a possibility or part of the overall plan.

Laura Lampton: Right, and just quality of life. They have this injury now and trying to provide interventions to maintain their quality of life. Again, because with a lot of these individuals, you see them become depressed after an accidental injury because of their impairments and the fact that they can’t do the things that they did before. Or as you mentioned, they’re a different person after a brain injury. That’s the one thing that we always taught families, no matter how much improvement they make, they’re not going to be the same person that they were before this accident.

You did mention getting them to and from the doctor’s appointments. That’s another aspect as far as transportation. Do they need a wheelchair-accessible van? If they’re wheelchair dependent, if you’re trying to transfer somebody into a vehicle, get them out of the wheelchair, put them in the vehicle, you can injure them. You can injure yourself. So making sure if it’s appropriate that they have that wheelchair-accessible vehicle. Some individuals, with spinal cord injuries, for example, can learn to drive again. There are driving evaluations, therapists that do driving evaluations and driver’s training. If that’s something appropriate, and making sure that they have the right hand controls to be able to operate the vehicle. Because obviously if they’re paralyzed, they’re not going to be able to use the brake and the gas, but they have hand controls that can be installed on a vehicle so that they can drive again.

With stroke patients, if the right side is paralyzed, they can install a left-side gas pedal so that they can then drive with their left foot. There’s different types of equipment and adaptations that can be made. Even modifying their home to make it wheelchair accessible, trying to get safety for them. You want to prevent those complications. You want to prevent further injury to them. So if they’re wheelchair dependent, modifying the bathroom so that it’s a roll-in shower, you can put them in a shower chair, roll them in there, give them their shower, and you don’t have to worry about if you’re trying to get them back out, because they’re wet, them slipping and you drop them and maybe even injure yourself or the caregiver injure themself.

Other modifications that I’ve utilized or put in a plan would be for artificial intelligence for the individual to be able to control the heat. If they’re a spinal cord injury, being able to control the heat. There are automatic doors that, again, they’re not going to be able to open the door and operate their wheelchair. So making sure that, especially if they’re staying some by themselves, if there’s an emergency, they can get out of that house.

David Craig: Absolutely. I think folks that are listening to it are like, “Well, it sounds complicated.” Obviously there’s a lot involved. How do you go about figuring all this out? How do you go about determining what somebody needs? Then I guess, what type of things are out there and what kind of cost is that attributed to it? Does it start with an interview of the person?

Laura Lampton: Typically, I try to start with reviewing the medical records so that I have the background information to know what kind of questions to ask that family or client. Then interview. Meet with them, interview them. Whether it be by Zoom like we’re doing now, since Covid hit things have kind of transitioned a little bit, or going in person if you know that you want to look at that house to say, is this accessible? Are there things that could be easier for them? Meeting with them, getting the information about what kind of equipment they’re using, what medicines they’re taking, the doctors they’re seeing. And if there’s anything out there, because some people have researched and said, “Well, I’ve seen this type of lift system, but it’s very expensive. That would be one of our goals would be able to have that type of a system,” something like that.
If the treatment providers will speak with me, I will reach out, try to talk to them to say, “I’m working on this life care plan for this individual. What do you foresee going forward for them as part of their needs?” Sometimes there are other experts on the case, a physician that may be involved in the case that I can then coordinate with to get their recommendations as far as future treatments, especially if the treatment providers won’t speak with me, to gain that additional information and support for the life care plan.

As far as knowing what’s out there, I attend a lot of continuing education courses, and there are other life care planners throughout the United States that I can access and ask questions of to say, “Hey, does anybody know have any information about this particular program?” Sometimes it’s just going online and doing research myself as far as what services are out there and in that geographical region where the person may live. Because as you mentioned, I do life care plans throughout the United States, so when I’m preparing them, I am trying to look for services or the cost of those services where that person lives, where they’re expected to undergo treatment. There are various databases out there that can provide that information. So, if I know that, for example, they’re going to need physical therapy, then I can go to these databases, put in various codes and the zip code, and it will give me average costs for the treatment in their geographical location, because obviously California is going to be a whole lot higher than Southern Indiana as far as the cost of services.

David Craig: I know that you’ve done, gosh, what do you think? How many hundreds of these have you done?

Laura Lampton: Well, I’ve been doing it for 23 years, so I’ve probably done 3,000 or more.

David Craig: So with respect to the work that you do, I would assume, just because of what I do, that most of this work is done on behalf of the patient, more on behalf of the person who’s injured or their lawyer. I know I do these a lot, but I know occasionally you’ve done them on the defense side. Can you explain to our audience maybe why you end up having to do more on the injured party’s side than the other side?

Laura Lampton: Well, based on my understanding, the burden of proof is placed on the plaintiff. They have to say, “Yes, I’m injured. These are my injuries. These are the damages.” They have to be the ones that prove what that cost is going to be going forward.

David Craig: From our standpoint, when we walk into a courtroom, we have to show the jury and we have to show, at least in some states, that burdens change. I practice in multiple states, but it’s probably more true than not, more likely than not, typically, that this is the cost of the future care. Some states let us do figuring inflation and interest rates like that, some make us do present value. But bottom line is, we have the burden. You’re absolutely right. I don’t know, in all the cash-dropping cases that I’ve done over the 38 years, it’s a very small percent where the defense has put on their own life care plan. On cases that you work on, do you see that a lot where the defense doesn’t put on a life care plan themselves or an expert?

Laura Lampton: The majority of the ones that I work on, there’s not somebody on the other side of me. If I’m on the plaintiff side, a lot of times when I’m hired on the defense side, I may not prepare a life care plan, but I’ll review the plan that’s been prepared to see if there’s any problems with it or how I might do it differently. But when I prepare a plan, whether it’s for the plaintiff, for the defense, I’m following the same steps, the same methodology, because again, the bottom line is you want to make sure that do no harm kind of approach and making sure that the appropriate interventions are set forth for them.

David Craig: What are some of the common… When you’re on the side of the patient and their lawyers, what are some of the things that you see the defense raise or argue? They’re pretty typical. I tend to see some of the same things over and over.

Laura Lampton: Sure. As I mentioned earlier, the home assistance, that’s the most expensive item, typically, in a life care plan. Again, if you’re talking $20, $30 an hour for somebody to come in there and provide assistance, that adds up very quickly, even if they’re not in there 24 hours a day, that typically is a big dollar item. If you’ve got someone who has a skilled need, in other words, it can’t be a home health aide, it would have to be a licensed nurse, whether that be an LPN or an RN to provide that service. There you’re getting into $60 to $100 per hour to come in and provide those, if they’re doing it on an hourly basis. Somebody that might have a feeding tube or a tracheostomy to help them breathe, that requires a skilled service by the state. Every state licensure board for nursing, that’s a skilled service, so an aide cannot do that service.

The other thing that can be a high dollar item, you mentioned earlier, household services. They may not need someone to provide hands-on care, but they’re no longer able to clean their house. They’re no longer able to carry laundry baskets, go to the grocery and carry all those groceries in, cut their grass. So there’s data and information out there about replacing those household services. The comment that I get, “Well, they’ve not hired somebody to do that. They’ve not hired somebody to come in and provide care for them.” No, they haven’t. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that that’s not a service that they need. They’ve been relying on their family to do that, and there’s a value to what the family is providing. Here’s what that monetary value would be if you were hiring that service.

The other comment that I see frequently is if there’s surgeries that might be recommended for the individual, “Well, how do you know they’re going to have the surgery? What if they don’t have the surgery and this number’s inflated?” Well, it’s been recommended. Do I know 100% that they’re going to have the surgery? No, I don’t. But if that’s something to help them down the road, then those numbers need to be included because as you mentioned, you only get one shot to get these dollar figures, so making sure you’ve got everything covered.

David Craig: Well, several years ago, an attorney called me and said, “David, there’s a potential client, he’s reached out to me, I’ve been talking to him for about two weeks. He got injured, he’s paralyzed, a semi backed into him and crushed his spine.” He was at a loading dock. I think it was Arkansas. “His brother’s helping take care of him. They’re in a trailer down there. His brother came, took him from Indiana down there and was trying to take care of him, but he’s thinking about settling.” This happened. I said, “Well, have you got a life care plan? Do you know the cost of taking care of this young man for the rest of,” he was very young, “for the rest of his life.” The lawyer’s like, “Well, no, because I haven’t even been hired yet. Will you talk to him?”

They set it up for me to talk to him. The insurance company for that particular case had already been to this trailer and had offered him some money. I tried to explain to them the cost of all the things you just talked about. That wasn’t something that they even understood, because unless you’re in this business, you don’t really realize all the little things that have to be taken care of, that have to be done. Then his brother was there. But the reality is, you’ve got to look at this person’s life, their whole life expectancy. Is that brother always going to be there? Is that brother going to get tired, like you said, is he going to get worn out and burn out? Is he qualified even to do some of the things that have to be done? So those are the conversations I had with them.

The adjuster, and I swear, literally offered a million dollars that day. I tried to explain to them that that was completely inadequate. That wouldn’t even touch anything. But they then talked to the adjuster and said they were talking to me on the telephone. They came in and doubled it, 2 million within an hour. Unfortunately I couldn’t get to Arkansas and they settled that case for an amount that will not take care of that young man for the rest of his life. But they didn’t know, and they hadn’t done that analysis.

So for anybody listening, please don’t make any decisions without knowing. All I’m asking is that you have information, and any lawyer that’s working on these type of cases, they hire somebody like Laura to look at these and to educate us. I don’t know how much it’s going to cost to take care of somebody. That’s why I have to hire people like you to help us and guide us so that we can make sure that we adequately protect the clients. Because it’s definitely going to be a number that… I do these a lot and I think sometimes I know, and I’m surprised, especially with the cost of medicine going up and the care.

It was extraordinarily painful to me. If I had just gotten called when they first started talking to that young man, I could have gotten down there, explained it to him. Then one of the things I see from the defense side, is that when they don’t put a life care planner up against us, they will tell the jury, “Well, this number is huge.” Because if it’s a young person and it’s a comprehensive, and this person’s really had a catastrophic injury, then that life care plan number is going to be large, relatively speaking. They’ll say, “Well, let’s cut that in half,” in closing arguments. I always remind the jury that, we try to be conservative on life care plans because you don’t want to overreach because that’s the best way to lose.

Laura Lampton: Exactly.

David Craig: So, if you feel like something needs to be marked out, then mark it out, but don’t just take a number and cut it in half, because each one of those things costs money and is necessary. That’s one of the more frustrating things that I hear defense say, is “just pick a number.”

Laura Lampton: Right. Well, and the other thing, especially if you’ve got a young child that has been injured in some way, because of the complexity of their case, the response that I see from the defense, “Well, they’re not going to live a full life expectancy, so they don’t need all that money. They’re only going to live 20 years, or they’re only going to…” How do you know how long they’re going to live? I know that that’s a risk. It’s a risk with spinal cord injuries that we talked about earlier, that complications from that spinal cord injury will reduce their life expectancy.

There is data out there and I will include that information when I prepare a life care plan for a spinal cord injury, “Based on their level of injury, this is what statistics show the reduction in their life expectancy will be as a result of the spinal cord injury.” Here’s what a normal life expectancy is. And if they get the quality care that’s included in this life care plan, they may live closer to that normal life expectancy as opposed to the reduced life expectancy. And then let the jury make that decision, but providing the numbers to them so that it’s not just, “Oh, just cut it in half.” Here’s the statistical information in the data that we have so they can make a more educated determination.

David Craig: Right. Well, what else do you think that people that are not in this business, that don’t do this day in and day out, and you talked to, you interview these folks and their families, is there something else, other questions they ask you or talk to you about that we haven’t touched?

Laura Lampton: A lot of times it is interesting when I am talking to the person and I’m asking them questions. I had a lady, for example, she had a brain injury. I’m like, “So when you’re in the kitchen and you’re trying to cook, do you have trouble following a recipe? Do you forget to add ingredients? Have you left the stove on?” And she’s like, “How do you know all of that?” I’ve been doing this for a long time. I understand the impairments that somebody with a brain injury or a spinal cord injury, what things that they’re facing on a day-to-day basis that somebody else may not realize. Again, she had a brain injury. Physically you couldn’t tell it, but the longer that you talk to somebody, you can pick up those memory impairments or the difficulties that they have.

That’s again, another thing, educating the jury. It’s an invisible injury basically. If somebody has a spinal cord injury and they’re in a wheelchair and they’re paralyzed, you could see that injury. Somebody with a brain injury, it’s harder to see. But again, being able to provide that information, that objective data that says, “Here’s what problems they’re having.” And from the research, these are common problems with a brain injury. But she was just like, “How did you know that?” And I’m like, “Again, it’s doing it for a long time, working with it clinically as well as in preparing life care plans for an individual.” But just trying to understand, there’s a lot of people, you don’t want to focus on those impairments, you want to focus on the positive, not the negative. But when I’m doing an interview with somebody, I understand this is hard for you to talk about, but I need to know everything because I can’t provide a quality life care plan if you don’t answer my questions honestly.

Because they don’t want to admit, “Well, my wife has to help me go to the bathroom because I can no longer wipe myself after I go to the bathroom.” That’s embarrassing. Some of the things are embarrassing to talk about, and they don’t want to admit them. But again, making sure that if you’re the attorney working on the case, remind them that Laura’s going to ask you questions that may be hard to answer, but to get what you need from the life care plan, she’s got to ask the questions and you got to be honest. It may be hard to admit or to answer, but that’s the best way to help me in preparing life care plans.

David Craig: Well, I would imagine you find this rewarding, because you’ve been doing it a while. I think when you put a plan together and you can make a difference in people’s lives, it’s very rewarding.

Laura Lampton: It is. I have to admit, I do miss the hands-on care, because I really enjoyed rehabilitation nursing and working and seeing them improve. But this is also very rewarding as well, because I can provide education to people that maybe they didn’t get when they were in the facility. Because sometimes it’s hard to get to everybody and hard to think of every single thing, because these days especially, they’re not staying inpatient for as long as they did whenever I first started.

I can remember early in my career at Frazier having a stroke patient in rehab for six weeks. Now you’re lucky if you get two weeks to help them to learn how to manage. They don’t always get all the education that they need, unfortunately. Being able to educate them and let them know that there are different services out there that may work for them, and to be able to explain to a jury, this is what they need and this is why. Then to watch the jury shaking their head going, “Yeah, that makes sense to me.” And when you get a good verdict, again, it’s rewarding to know that I was part of that to help them get the services and the things that they need going forward.

David Craig: I think, and you mentioned, I guess it is one of the changes I hadn’t thought about, but in all the years I’ve been doing it, I think communications from the healthcare profession to my clients have definitely decreased. I think a lot of facilities now limit the amount of time they can spend with the patients. The amount of time they’re in a facility has changed. And overall, people are just, they don’t necessarily always understand everything the doctor’s telling them, they’re hearing it for the first time in a visit, they don’t remember it all.
I find that when they talk to somebody like you and we can show them a plan, we can put it together, it’s a lot more helpful to them because they can ask questions, and they can take their time and they can look at it and they can digest it. I think that that is huge. It is helpful. I had the same conversations when they tell me, “Here are the things that I’ve seen, have you had any issues with this or that?” And they, “Oh, yeah. We do.” Maybe they haven’t even told their doctors, because like you said, especially with brain injuries, people don’t like to admit they’re different and their families don’t like to say it in front of them in the doctor’s office necessarily. But we do make a difference. You make a difference. I was reminded of this a few weeks ago.

I had a phone call from an old client. I took the call and I said, “Well, I don’t know what this person’s calling me for.” But I always talk to my clients, and it’s been years since I had talked with him. He said, “Dave, I just wanted to call you. My wife and I think of you and your firm almost every day because of the difference you made in our lives. My wife said, ‘You know, you got to call and tell him that.’ Because today we’re thinking about you and the difference you’ve made in our lives and we just want to call you for no reason other than to remind you that what you’re doing is right and what you’re doing is good.” So I appreciate everything you do on behalf of our patients and patients all over the country because it is extraordinarily important for people to have the information. What they do with it is their choice. What a jury does with it is their choice. Our job is to make sure that people know and have that information. So thank you so much for what you do.

Laura Lampton: Well, thank you for having me on today.

David Craig: This is David Craig, and you’ve been listening to After The Crash. If you’d more information about me or my law firm, please go to our website. Or if you’d like to talk to me, you can call one 1-800-ASK-DAVID. If you would like a guide on what to do after a truck wreck, then pick up my book, Semitruck Wreck, A Guide for Victims and Their Families, which is available on Amazon, or you can download it for free on our website.