Accelerated Medical Practice Blog

One of the most famous examples of the law of unintended consequences is Kudzu. Introduced to the United States in 1876, the plant was originally intended as erosion control. Currently spreading at a rate of 150,000 acres per year, the plant will overtake everything in its path when left unchecked. What are the unintended consequences created by your EMR implementation? Think back to charge entry employees. Usually, when keying charges into the PM system, the process is more complicated than simple data entry....

When you look at the typical project plan for an EMR implementation, the clinical components are typically the focal point: template selection and customization, physician training, clinical workflow, etc. Automating the charge capture and coding elements are usually placed at the bottom of the work list and may never be fully implemented. This gap in implementation planning often results in practices being forced to produce costly, manual workarounds as needed. This is a dangerous financial hazard...

When many EMRs were originally designed, charge capture and coding was not a major design objective. As an ancillary feature and benefit of EMRs—untested in the real world—that EMRs could replace the superbill began to appear in sales presentations. 

"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).