"Mind the gap" is a warning for passengers to take caution while crossing the gap between the train door and the railway platform. Introduced in 1969 on the London Underground, this warning also serves physician practices well as they pursue the important goal of implementing an electronic medical record (EMR). 

Back in the early 90’s when the healthcare technology industry began to design EMRs, the fundamental problem they were attempting to solve was to properly and efficiently automate the process of documenting a physician’s clinical exam of a patient. As they grew to understand more about the process and data they were collecting, they realized as a by-product of documenting the exam they captured much of the same data used by practice management (PM) systems for a claim form to be completed. 

Thus, in the original design of many EMRs, charge capture and medical coding was an afterthought rather than an objective. When important elements are left out of the original design, customers often create their own typically inefficient, time-consuming, and unproductive workarounds. This is often the case with accurately and efficiently capturing and coding an encounter.

Making sure that your EMR selection team identifies costly design gaps during the evaluation process can help set proper expectations and save time and money. 

“Mind the EMR Gap” now or pay the price later!