Independent Practices | Shared Infrastructure | Clinician-Led Governance
Independence Through Collaboration.
Independent practices have faced an impossible choice: sell to a consolidator and lose autonomy, or stay independent and absorb every scale disadvantage alone. Arete is a third path — the infrastructure and Contracting Engine of a large system, without giving up the ownership, identity, and clinical relationships your community depends on.
Arete gives independent practices the infrastructure and Contracting Engine of a large system — while keeping ownership, identity, and clinical autonomy fully intact.
The Healthcare Environment Has Changed
You Built Something Exceptional.
The World Around You Has Shifted.
The underlying challenge is larger than any individual practice. Healthcare increasingly rewards scale — contracts, referrals, technology, and care pathways are all being designed around organized groups. Clinical excellence remains essential, but excellence alone no longer creates opportunity.
Independent clinic — on its own
Arete network member — supported
Payer contracts
Accept posted rates. No path to value-based contracting.
Single-TIN contracting structure, joint payer contracting opportunities grounded in shared quality metrics and care protocols, and value-based arrangements as market conditions and payer relationships permit.
Administrative tasks
Every practice independently staffing and managing billing, credentialing, reporting, and compliance — with limited performance data to know how they compare.
Selected administrative functions centralized at the network level — with the goal of reducing avoidable clinic-level burden and improving performance visibility through shared data infrastructure.
Visibility & referrals
Invisible to PCPs, employers, and health systems. AI search favors organized groups — the gap widens every day.
Network membership can improve visibility within organized MSK access pathways used by payers, employers, medical groups, and referral partners.
Healthcare demands scale.
Independent practice deserves a better answer than consolidation.
“The greatest risk may not be changing — it may be standing still while the system reorganizes around you.”
Arete is likely a fit if…
You plan to keep practicing and growing — not sell and exit in the next few years
Billing, credentialing, or reporting are pulling you away from clinical time
You've watched payer contracts or referrals go to organized groups instead of you
You want a real voice in governance, not just a vendor relationship
Probably not the right time if…
You're actively trying to sell your practice outright
You just completed a major EHR or billing system transition
You want to hand off every operating decision, not just the administrative ones
You're not open to any shared clinical quality standards or reporting
Enterprise Technology
Enterprise-grade EHR and clinical tools — interoperable, intuitive, and available to every member at collective cost.
Billing & Revenue Cycle
Centralized billing support, denial management, and revenue-cycle reporting — with the goal of improving billing consistency, denial management, reporting, and collection performance.
Analytics & Reporting
Real-time outcomes dashboards and payer-ready quality metrics — walk into every negotiation with data that speaks for itself.
Value-Based Contracting
Arete is designed to pursue value-based contracting opportunities on behalf of the network where payer relationships, market conditions, and clinical integration requirements support them.
Care Coordination & Connectivity
Shared EHR infrastructure and health information exchange capabilities — connecting your practice to the broader care continuum.
Referrals & Preferred Pathway
Structured referral relationships with the payers, employers, and medical groups who route patients to organized, credentialed networks — not individual practices.
Through the Arete MSO, member clinics gain access to top-tier healthcare technology, higher-performing support systems, direct connectivity to the greater healthcare ecosystem, and powerful analytics — with shared infrastructure designed to reduce the total cost of technology, billing, and administrative operations across member practices. This is what becomes possible when we work together.
Clinically Integrated Network
The Contracting Engine You've Been Missing.
The Arete CIN gives independent musculoskeletal clinics access to joint contracting grounded in shared quality metrics, common care protocols, and documented accountability — plus the care coordination capabilities that large health systems have always taken for granted — without giving up ownership or clinical autonomy.
Click on the topics in What Is a Clinically Integrated Network? to the right to learn more →
Arete's governance structure — QIC, Advisory Committees, specialty workgroups, and shared accountability — is designed so that clinical integration means collaboration, not control. Learn how Arete is governed →
What Is a Clinically Integrated Network?
1. It creates a framework for joint contracting when supported by active clinical integration — shared quality metrics, care protocols, documented network accountability, and value-based contracting arrangements.
A properly structured and actively governed CIN can allow independent practices to pursue joint payer contracting when that collaboration is reasonably necessary to achieve quality, cost, coordination, and value-based care objectives — supported by shared quality metrics, common care protocols, and documented accountability across the network. This gives independent clinics access to contracting structures that large health systems take for granted.
2. It enables value-based contracts that reward your outcomes.
As a CIN member, your reimbursement can be tied to the results you deliver — not just visits documented. Shared savings, episode-based payments, and quality bonuses become possible at the network level in ways no individual practice can access alone.
3. It makes your outcomes visible — and credible — to payers and employers.
Individual practices collect outcomes data, but it stays siloed. A CIN aggregates that data across the network, creating statistically significant performance evidence that health plans and employers recognize — opening doors that are closed to independent practices.
4. It supports your clinic's visibility within organized MSK care pathways.
Health systems, PCPs, and employer navigation platforms direct patients to organized, credentialed networks — not individual practices. CIN membership gives your clinic a improved visibility within those organized care access pathways, with the network's credentialing and outcomes record as the trust signal.
5. Clinical standards, care pathways, quality initiatives, and practice-facing priorities are shaped through provider-led governance structures.
The Arete CIN is member-governed. Clinical standards, care pathways, quality initiatives, and contracting priorities are shaped by provider-led committees. You retain 100% practice ownership and have a meaningful voice in decisions that affect your livelihood.
What practices keep
Everything That Matters
Nothing about who you are or how you practice changes.
Full Ownership
No equity transfer, no acquisition, no outside ownership stake of any kind.
Clinical Autonomy
How you practice is your decision. Clinical integration means shared quality — not micromanagement.
Direct Patient Relationships
Your patients remain yours. No patient-sharing, no reassignment, no intermediary.
Local Identity
Your name, your brand, your community presence. Arete adds visibility — it does not replace it.
Staffing Decisions
You hire, manage, and build your team. Arete has no role in employment decisions inside your practice.
Care Philosophy
What you believe in and how you approach care remain entirely yours.
What practices lose
The Burdens You Used to Carry Alone
The administrative weight that pulls you away from clinical care.
Manual Billing & Claims Work
Centralized RCM handles coding, submission, denial management, and follow-up — so your staff can focus on patients, not paperwork.
Credentialing & Re-credentialing
Network-level credentialing infrastructure manages payer enrollment and re-credentialing cycles on your behalf.
Technology Overhead
No more managing fragmented, underperforming software. Shared EHR and operational tools replace the patchwork at collective cost.
Contracting Isolation
Stop negotiating alone against payers who have every advantage. The CIN negotiates on your behalf — with data, volume, and structure behind it.
Reporting Without Visibility
Replace disconnected spreadsheets with real-time outcomes dashboards and payer-ready quality metrics that actually tell you how you’re performing.
Referral Invisibility
PCPs, employers, and health systems route patients to organized networks, not isolated practices. Network membership is designed to close that gap.
Will I lose control of my practice?
No. Arete providers retain complete ownership and operational control. Arete does not acquire your practice or take control of clinical decision-making. Participating practices enter into defined network and services agreements that describe applicable fees, services, quality expectations, and operational responsibilities. Your practice name, care philosophy, clinical staff, and patient relationships remain entirely yours. Membership means gaining access to shared infrastructure — not surrendering the independence that makes your practice worth building.
Is this another intermediary network?
No. Intermediary networks are insurance company solutions for organizing independent clinics into a single contract and claims pathway. Arete is structured differently. It is a Clinically Integrated Network governed by its member providers. The Contracting Engine, infrastructure, and resources flow to providers — not through a management layer that often retains most of the value.
What if I am satisfied with my current EHR?
We understand the apprehension about changing EHRs. There are three important considerations. First, the Arete team manages the full build and onboarding of your new EHR — making the transition significantly easier than past experiences. Second, most independent clinics are on lower-end platforms. Arete evaluates each practice's workflows during onboarding and supports process redesign intended to reduce avoidable manual work across EHR, billing, credentialing, and reporting. Third, nearly all independent clinics do not participate in a qualified health information exchange infrastructure — which means they are effectively invisible in the technology connectivity layer used by most medical systems. Arete's EHR options support visibility within organized MSK access pathways used by payers, employers, and referral partners.
Is Arete private equity backed?
No. Arete is not private equity backed, and it does not operate like a roll-up. Arete does not acquire practices, does not centralize clinical decision-making, and does not replace local identity. The platform surrounds practices with shared infrastructure so they can remain locally owned, clinically autonomous, and economically durable. Arete is not private-equity backed. Its model is designed around long-term infrastructure, commercially reasonable service arrangements, reinvestment in network capabilities, and support for participating practices. Arete is designed to endure as a provider-built organization whose long-term success is aligned with the practices that build it.
Will this increase my costs?
In most cases, the opposite. The Arete MSO uses the collective purchasing power of the network to negotiate technology, services, and infrastructure at costs no single practice could access independently. The administrative functions that currently consume practice resources are handled centrally — with the goal of improving consistency, performance visibility, and operational efficiency. We conduct a cost analysis with every practice before any commitment is made.
See published pricing and an interactive calculator →
1
15-minute call
No slides. We ask about your practice, your payer mix, and what's actually costing you time.
2
Practice-specific review
We look at your current technology, billing, and contracting position against network benchmarks.
3
See your numbers
A clinic-specific cost and opportunity analysis — not a generic pitch. You'll see exactly what would change.
4
You decide
No pressure, no clock. Join when it's right, or don't. Either answer is fine with us.
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