Scaling to $500M in Revenue: ModMed CEO Daniel Cane (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Okay. So that’s one positioning differentiation. What about within the private practice market? Why do your customers pick you and what is special about it? What are the needs of a dermatology private practice or an OB-GYN practice or a plastic surgery practice? What’s special about each of these individual types of practices?

Daniel Cane: It’s right there in your question: what’s special about them? If you think about a specialist, they’ve spent many years training in their specialty. You’re not just a doctor—you go through residency and further specialize, which takes years to master your craft. The idea that all of them could use the same system is a fallacy; it’s a trap.

We build systems that cater specifically to the unique needs, workflows, medical content, billing, and everything else for specialists like gastroenterologists, dermatologists, and orthopedic surgeons. This specialty-specific approach is a significant differentiator.

Another major differentiator is that we offer a true cloud platform. It’s a subscription-based software—there’s nothing to download or install. Everything is in the cloud, making it scalable, reliable, and secure. Unfortunately, there isn’t much true SaaS in healthcare, which is disappointing, but it’s the reality.

The third big differentiator is that we’ve always developed what I call smart or intelligent software—what’s now referred to as AI-enabled. For 15 years, we’ve been building adaptive learning software. Long before AI became a buzzword, we used practices’ data to anticipate what would happen next.

For example, no two doctors practice the same way. If you look at 100 dermatologists diagnosing psoriasis, they’ll have 100 different ways of treating it—different protocols, therapy combinations, and treatment regimens—and that’s a good thing. The idea of building a one-size-fits-all system that tells everyone exactly what to do just doesn’t work.

Instead, we create software that learns. For instance, it might recognize that one doctor uses a 15 blade for excising lesions in certain parts of the body, but an 11 blade elsewhere. They may use different tools for stopping bleeding, wound care, aftercare, and counseling. The software adapts to these preferences, saving time by learning and anticipating the provider’s needs.

One of our biggest claims to fame is that our application suite allows providers to document in real time using a touch-based iPad. It generates the note, bill, prescriptions, lab orders, and patient education—all from a simple set of touch inputs.

Sramana Mitra: You’ve said a couple of things in there. There is medical content that is specific to that specialization. There is workflow that is specific to that specialization. There is treatment choices within that specialization. Then you talked about billing that is specific to that specialization.

Now, one of the case studies we did very early on that was a very successful company in billing was Athenahealth. Is that part of your competitive landscape then?

Daniel Cane: Oh yes, absolutely. Athena has been doing this for even longer than Modernizing Medicine. Athena is a service provider that provides tech-enabled services, but when you select Athena as a practice, you are outsourcing your billing. They do the billing for you.

In contrast, ModMed is a software company. With our software, you can continue working with your existing biller. For many small practices, this might be a spouse who doubles as the front desk person and biller.

We’re software-focused, which means we support whatever billing system you want to use. If you prefer, we also offer an Athena-like solution where you can outsource billing to us. However, billing services are not a primary focus for Modernizing Medicine—our main focus is technology and software.

That said, Athena does a great job with their service, and I’ll give them full credit for that. It’s just a different type of offering. While we’re quasi-competitive, Athena’s software is the same regardless of whether you’re a primary care physician or an otolaryngologist—you get Athena.

At ModMed, we provide specialty-specific software: ModMed Dermatology, ModMed Ophthalmology, ModMed Orthopedics, and so on. You’re getting very specialty-specific software.

This segment is part 2 in the series : Scaling to $500M in Revenue: ModMed CEO Daniel Cane
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