The life care planner’s role contains various responsibilities, including medical records management, conducting client meetings, facilitating expert consultations, conducting cost research, and report writing. This may feel like you are always behind or stuck in paperwork.
Many life care planners struggle to keep up with heavy caseloads and tight deadlines. But the good news is that there are simple tricks that can help you save time, stay organized, and focus more on what matters the most, like creating accurate and useful life care plans.
In this blog, we will look at time-saving tips for life care planners to manage work more efficiently. It will help you get organized, stay focused, and make space for what matters most.
Get Organized Before You Start
Disorganization is the first thing that can cost more than just time. It can lead to missed deadlines, lost documents, or even duplicate work. If you’ve ever reordered a piece of equipment because you couldn’t find your original research, it can waste all your efforts and time.
How to Get Ahead of It:
- Keep all client documents in clearly labeled folders, whether digital or physical.
- Use a consistent file-naming system so you can find what you need quickly.
- Create a simple workspace layout, one for current cases and the other for completed ones.
- Set a time each week to clean up and organize. Just 15–20 minutes is enough.
- When your space and files are tidy, your thinking becomes clearer, and your planning becomes faster.
A lot of time is lost trying to “figure things out” once you’re already knee-deep in a case. You can also create a case checklist.
Make a basic checklist that includes:
- Medical records received
- Interviews scheduled
- Research needed (therapies, medications, equipment)
- Experts to consult
- Draft completion
- Review and final submission
Use the same list for every case. It ensures nothing is missed and helps you track progress at a glance. Be sure to use a standard template for your notes, interviews, or final reports. Create a few standard templates and adjust when needed. This reduces the need to start from scratch every time and keeps formatting consistent.
Do a Time Audit and Plan Your Day
Before you can manage your time better, you need to know where it goes. A time audit means tracking all your activities for a few days. Write down every task, large or small, and how long you spend on it.
Notice: Which task is more time-consuming?
Look for tasks you can streamline, delegate, or eliminate.
A time audit helps you target the main causes of time loss, allowing you to focus your efforts where they make the biggest difference.
Planning is essential for life care planners, especially when focusing on multiple clients and deadlines.
You have to block time on your calendar for important tasks that need focus with no interruptions and group similar cases together (e.g, client calls, report writing).
Use a weekly planning session to review your caseload, upcoming deadlines, and priorities.
Make Use of Technology
To benefit from simple tools, you don’t need to be a technical expert. Some simple apps can save you valuable time.
Here is the list of some easy-to-use tools:
Medical Record Organizer
Programs like Adobe Acrobat, casedrive or CaseMap allow you to label, tag, and search through records quickly. You can also highlight and leave notes, which saves time flipping through thousands of pages.
Arrange Everything in One Place
Many will have files scattered in emails, desktops, and folders. Instead of using that, use a cloud storage system like Google Drive or Dropbox. Create a folder for each client with subfolders for records, notes, drafts, and final documents.
Task Management
To-do list apps can organize and synchronize your tasks across devices. Examples include Todoist, Microsoft To Do, or Toodledo. Scheduling and note-taking apps can help send reminders and capture notes.
Speech-to-Text
Use dictation tools in Google Docs or Microsoft Word to get your thoughts down faster.
Prioritize Work
Without clear priorities, it’s easy to get pulled in every direction. You might spend hours researching something that could wait, while more urgent tasks fall through the cracks.
Not all tasks are equally important. Use the “80/20 rule” (also known as the Pareto Principle): focus most of your energy on the 20% of tasks that will make the 80% impact.
Know what your important task is. For this, identify key deadlines first. Choose one top priority per day. This keeps your focus steady, not scattered. When you know what’s important, it’s easier to ignore distractions and work with purpose.
Delegate Your Work
Life care planning is basically a team effort. You don’t need to do everything yourself. There are some skilled professionals who can help you with the time-consuming parts of the job.
You can sort and summarize records yourself, but it is a time-draining task. It’s easy to send them to a service that reviews and organizes them for you. You’ll receive summaries and relevant notes, allowing you to focus on the planning.
LezDo TechMed expert team sort, summarize, and highlight the most relevant details in medical record for each case. This makes it easier to identify injuries, treatments, and long-term needs without getting stuck in paperwork.
For a virtual assistant, hire a person to help with scheduling, emails, or formatting reports. Additionally, you can assign tasks according to your team members’ strengths. Use a shared “to-do list” with names next to each task so everyone knows what’s their work and when to finish. Assign clear responsibilities to avoid confusion or unfinished work.
Need Quality Medical Record Reviews?
Take Care of Yourself Along the Way
Time management is not only about working faster; it’s also about working smarter and taking care of yourself. If you’re constantly tired, stressed, or distracted, your work will suffer.
You should step outside for a few minutes several times a day. Take short breaks between calls or paperwork to reset your mind and avoid burnout. Taking care of yourself in these small ways helps you get more energy and focus to give to the people who rely on you.
If your schedule is full, it’s okay to delay or reject a new case. Delivering high-quality work is more important than taking on too much.
Final Thoughts
Working as a life care planner is demanding work, but you don’t have to drown in it. Try these few tips above and see what works great for you. With better systems in place, you’ll have more time for deep thinking, better reports, and maybe even a little more relaxation time in your week.
