Specialty-Specific Practice Management: Insights From Dr. Joel Salamon

What does it take to build software that actually works the way a specialty medical practice works?

Dr. Joel Salamon, Medical Director of Pain Management for ModMed and a board-certified pain management physician, joined Health Innovation Matters at HIMSS in Las Vegas to answer that question. He offered a practicing physician’s view of why specialty-specific software matters, how AI is changing every part of the practice, and the biggest billing challenge practices will face in the year ahead.

Listen to the full episode on Health Innovation Matters.

Why it’s easier to teach a specialty clinician to code

ModMed began with a conversation in an exam room. Technology entrepreneur Dan Cane, ModMed co-Founder and co-CEO, went to see dermatologist Dr. Michael Sherling, ModMed co-Founder and Chief Medical and Strategy Officer, for a routine skin check, and the two started talking about how much the doctor disliked his EHR. That conversation led to the founding of ModMed in 2010.

Dr. Salamon put their philosophy simply: “It’s way easier to teach a doctor how to code than it is to teach an engineer medicine.”

So ModMed started teaching doctors to code.

Doctors don’t need a software engineer to explain how a visit should work. They already know. They live it all day. They know how the encounter flows. They know what the note needs to capture. They know which details matter clinically and which ones are noise.

Today, physicians from the specialties ModMed serves complete a coding boot camp, master the systems they need, and build the specialty-specific parts of the software with the help of software engineers. When that clinical knowledge is part of the software itself, specialty-specific stops being a marketing buzzword.

When your specialty changes, your software should too

Specialty medicine doesn’t sit still. New treatments emerge. New procedures become standardized. Documentation requirements change. Billing rules shift. The solution everyone took for granted six months ago suddenly earns a mental asterisk.

Meanwhile, software built for everybody has a nasty habit of fitting nobody especially well. Because ModMed’s specialty content is built with physicians, it can evolve with the specialty.

“Anytime there’s a change in our specialty,” Dr. Salamon explained, “we actually go into the code and change the product.”

That matters because, in the real world, specialty-specific should mean more than having the right terminology in a dropdown menu. It should mean the software adapts when the specialty does.

Specialties don’t always stay in their lanes

Specialty practices don’t always fit neatly into a single box. Dr. Salamon pointed to pain management and orthopedics as one example. About 20 years ago, orthopedic groups began bringing pain physicians in-house instead of automatically referring those patients outside the practice.

Today, many orthopedic practices include pain physicians. The reason is logical: a patient with a herniated disc may see a pain physician first because major spine surgery isn’t necessarily their first preference. And a patient experiencing pain after an orthopedic procedure may quickly find they need a pain specialist.

The specialties overlap because their patients do.

For practices like these, a true fit means more than software that understands two separate specialties. It means supporting how those specialties share patients, schedules, documentation, and billing without forcing staff to hold the whole thing together with manual workarounds.

AI that supports every part of the practice

Dr. Salamon noted that AI has been one of ModMed’s primary areas of focus. That focus is broader than a single flashy feature.

In his words, ModMed set out to create a system where “every part of your practice can be assisted by AI.” He described what that looks like in his own practice:

• At the front desk: AI can help answer incoming calls, transcribe them into text, and route them to the right people. As Dr. Salamon put it, “That way, you’re not bogged down answering phones all day.”
• In the exam room: ModMed Scribe captures the conversation so he can focus on the patient. “I go into a room with my iPad, I click record, and then I don’t touch it again. I sit back, and we just have a chat.” He called it “the single greatest thing that’s happened to me as a physician in 30 years.”
• In the back office: AI can help billing teams identify why a claim was denied and surface insights to flag similar issues in the future.

That’s not one AI feature bolted onto one part of the day. It’s AI showing up from the first phone call to the final payment.

And that only works when the foundation supports the whole practice. ModMed Practice Management is the operational and financial foundation of The AI-Powered Practice^™, connecting scheduling, billing, claims, payments, and reporting.

When payer AI meets practice AI

Asked what physicians should be watching next, Dr. Salamon pointed to a key industry shift: insurers using AI-review systems to scrutinize claims. He described a familiar problem with a new twist. A physician documents and codes a visit at one level. Then the payer’s AI determines that the visit should be reimbursed at a lower level. He said he is seeing it with commercial insurers and workers’ compensation.

“It’s the one complaint we get from physicians the most,” he said.

His prediction is that physicians adopting AI tools of their own to respond will become one of the biggest stories in healthcare. Payer AI on one side. Practice AI on the other. Healthcare is fighting AI with AI.

What this means for your practice

Dr. Salamon’s point is hard to miss: specialty software gets better when the people building it actually understand the specialty.

That means knowing how the visit flows.

How the note is built.

Where coding gets complicated.

Where staff lose time.

And what changes when clinical standards evolve.

For specialty practices, the goal isn’t software that technically supports your field. It’s software that understands how you work.

FAQs

What does “specialty-specific” actually mean for my practice?

It means the software should do more than just offer the right terminology in a drop-down menu. It means the software is built to understand how your visit flows, what your note needs to capture, and how to support workflows when specialties overlap and share patients.

Who builds ModMed’s specialty software?

ModMed’s specialty software is built by practicing physicians. Instead of teaching engineers about medicine, ModMed teaches doctors how to code, allowing them to build their clinical knowledge directly into the software.

Does ModMed’s AI only work in the exam room?

No. ModMed is designed to assist every part of the practice. While ModMed Scribe supports the exam room by suggesting visit notes, AI also helps the front desk route calls and helps the billing team flag claim denial trends.

Schedule an intro call to see how ModMed Practice Management, the operational and financial foundation of The AI-Powered Practice, can support your specialty practice.

Listen to the full episode on Health Innovation Matters.

This blog is intended for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal or medical advice. Please consult with your legal counsel and other qualified advisors to ensure compliance with applicable laws, regulations, and standards.