Introducing the Empower Trusted Partner Network for Personal-Injury Providers

We are introducing the Empower Trusted Partner Network, or TPN, a program that extends our coordinated care model to independent personal-injury providers. The Trusted Partner Network connects providers with matched referral opportunities while Empower coordinates the case administration that ordinarily consumes a practice's time and attention.

The network is currently onboarding providers in Arizona, Texas, Nevada, and Georgia, with additional markets planned. We are describing it plainly here because a program like this only works when providers understand exactly what it is and, just as importantly, what it is not.

This announcement describes the problem the Trusted Partner Network addresses, how participation works, and the commitments that define it, including the clinical autonomy that stays with the treating provider and the transparency that governs participation terms.

Providers who treat personal-injury patients often find that the medicine is the smallest part of the work. Around each case sits a burden of administration: carrying receivables over long periods, tracking case status across many law firms, chasing settlement updates, and managing lien-related paperwork. A clinical practice can quietly become a collections operation, and the parts of the job a provider trained for shrink accordingly.

This burden is the reason many capable providers limit how many personal-injury patients they will accept, even when the clinical need is clear. The infrastructure required to manage the financial and administrative side of these cases is significant, and building it internally is a distraction from care. The Trusted Partner Network exists to carry that infrastructure so the provider does not have to.

Our own operating experience shaped the design. Empower is an operating healthcare provider that coordinates more than 5,000 appointments per month across a team of more than 250 licensed providers, with in-person injury care across 43 states and VA services and telehealth available in all 50 states. The coordination discipline that supports that volume is the same discipline the Trusted Partner Network extends to independent practices.

Participation begins with a short interest form, followed by credentialing conducted with the provider network team. Once credentialed, a provider sets their preferences: the service lines they offer, the geography they cover, their scheduling capacity, and the case types they accept. Referral opportunities are then matched to those preferences rather than pushed indiscriminately.

When a matched opportunity arises, the provider reviews it and decides whether to accept it. There is no obligation to accept every referral, and a case that does not fit a practice can be declined. Referral volume is not guaranteed; opportunities depend on demand, market availability, and the provider's own stated preferences. We state this plainly because the alternative, implying a steady flow of patients, would set an expectation the program does not promise.

Once a provider accepts a case, Empower coordinates the surrounding administration: lien servicing, case follow-up, and settlement-related coordination. The provider treats the patient and documents the care. The network handles the operational load around it, which is the entire point of the arrangement.

A network that touches the financial side of care must be unambiguous about the clinical side. Participating providers determine medical necessity, establish treatment plans, and document care according to their own independent professional judgment. Empower coordinates the case; it does not direct the care. That boundary is not a slogan. It is the condition under which the program operates.

There is no payment for referrals, and there is no requirement to provide unnecessary treatment. Care should be medically necessary and grounded in patient need, full stop. A provider's clinical decisions remain their own responsibility and their own prerogative, and the network is structured so that its coordination role never crosses into that territory.

This is consistent with how Empower has always operated. In our compensation and medico-legal work, clinical accountability sits with clinicians and never with the parties who request an evaluation. The Trusted Partner Network applies the same principle to treatment: the coordination exists to support the provider's judgment, not to substitute for it.

We hold to a clear commitment on terms. Participation terms, including financial terms, are provided in writing before a provider accepts treatment responsibility. A provider reviews those terms and decides whether to proceed. Nothing binds a provider until written terms are in place, and there is no application fee to explore the program.

We are deliberately not publishing rates or specific financial figures here, because terms may vary by specialty, market, and case type, and because the appropriate place for those details is a written agreement a provider can read in full. What we will commit to publicly is the sequence: you see the applicable terms before you take on a case, not after. That order is the substance of the commitment.

The same transparency applies to what the program does not promise. It does not guarantee referral volume, it does not require accepting every referral, and participation is subject to credentialing and market availability. Stating the limits as clearly as the benefits is how a program earns the trust of the professionals it hopes to work with.

The Trusted Partner Network is a natural extension of the connected care model we have built across our evaluation work. The same conviction runs through both: providers do their best work when they are freed from administrative burden, and coordination done well removes friction without touching clinical judgment. The network applies that conviction to personal-injury treatment.

For now, onboarding is open to providers in Arizona, Texas, Nevada, and Georgia, with additional markets planned. Providers in other states are welcome to express interest, and the provider network team reviews interest against current and planned market availability. We are not attaching dates to expansion, because we would rather open a market well than announce one early.

Providers interested in learning more can submit an interest form to begin a conversation. From there, the process moves at the pace of credentialing and fit, and the written terms arrive before any commitment is made. That is the shape of the Trusted Partner Network, and it is the shape we intend to hold as it grows.