Although personal injury law has been designed to help accident victims claim compensation, things are far more complicated on the ground. Insurance companies often try every trick in the book to settle claims for less. Many victims fall prey to these tactics and take lowball settlements for quick cash.
According to statistics, 95% of cases settle before trial, so you can imagine how many victims do not get the compensation they deserve.
Fortunately, PainWorth, an award-winning insurance tech startup, has emerged as a game-changer in this context. Acclaimed as the future of claims settlement, PainWorth has won several prestigious awards, such as the American Bar Association’s Startup Alley 2021 and Hartford’s 2021 Global Insurtech Innovation Challenge. It has also raised a seed funding of $1.7 million.
We will walk you through PainWorth’s journey and highlight its achievements along the way. Before that, we will explain the element of a compensation claim to help you understand the challenges of calculating a viable settlement amount.
Components of Personal Injury Compensation
Personal injury compensation should include the cost of the entire damages a victim sustains due to the negligence of a guilty person, whether a driver, business owner, or medical practitioner. Although the value may differ for every victim, the compensation includes the following common elements:
- Costs for medical, paramedical, and rehabilitative treatments, medications, and services
- Out-of-pocket expenses to address damages
- Income and wage losses
- Expected losses in future income
- Pain and suffering
- Loss or reduction in ability to do household chores
- Reduction in quality of life
- Loss of companionship or consortium
As a victim, you should not accept a settlement amount until you are sure that you have reached the point of maximum recovery. Sealing a deal too soon means there is always a risk of a deep-seated injury like internal bleeding or organ damage surfacing later. You may end up with a hefty treatment cost out of pocket if something comes up after accepting a claim.
Most victims struggle to find the exact dollar value of a personal injury claim because it includes non-monetary elements such as the cost of pain and suffering. Legal professionals too have a tough time calculating the exact value. The challenge necessitates an innovative solution like PainWorth that reduces complexities and delivers accurate values.
The Evolution of PainWorth
PainWorth’s core idea stemmed from the personal experience of its co-founder Mike Zouhri. As Zouhri met with a hit-and-run accident caused by a drunk driver, he struggled for months with a personal injury claim, even after the driver was caught. The process was slow, expensive, and arduous, taking years to settle. Even worse, he realized that it entailed hefty legal bills.
Zouhri decided to find a solution by teaming up with experts from the fields of law, insurance, data science, and machine learning. After relentless effort, the team came up with PainWorth, a software product to automate and simplify the personal injury settlement process. It offers a groundbreaking technology to help victims and insurers.
Additionally, injury lawyers like Russell & Hill, PLLC can benefit from this solution to generate a relevant settlement amount in a few clicks. This means a reliable tool does all the heavy lifting of complex calculations for legal professionals, letting them focus on the negotiation part.
How Does PainWorth Work?
PainWorth seeks some details as input from the user and analyzes them with the help of an algorithm that researches thousands of similar legal cases. It uses the data from past cases to provide an estimate of the claim’s value. Besides a dollar figure of the claim value, it also gives supporting citations, references, and documents. Legal professionals and victims can use these resources to strengthen their argument.
It saves the users from long and expensive research to calculate the optimal compensation value. With this, victims have the peace of mind about getting the claim they deserve. Legal professionals can save time and effort. Overall, the back-and-forth litigation overloading the already overburdened justice system is reduced to a minimum.
What Lies Ahead With PainWorth?
PainWorth is an innovation that ushers a new era for personal injury victims, insurance companies, and legal professionals. Not surprisingly, it has secured massive funding of $1.7 million from leading investors like 2048 Ventures, Panache Ventures, and Mistral Venture Partners. Founders note that the funding will enable the company to expand and enhance its claims estimation technology to deliver better services to victims, insurers, adjusters, and lawyers across Canada and the US.
They also plan to add to the capabilities of the software product by adding more local legislation and case law data to the system. Following this, it will offer faster, better, and more comprehensive solutions to end users. Claimants and insurers can expect much more as the company transforms loads of raw data into time-saving and money-saving legal insights.
In conclusion, PainWorth brings hope for personal injury victims struggling with lengthy litigation processes and low settlement risks. It can provide faster settlements to victims and reduce unnecessary burdens on the legal system.