There was no shortage of hand-wringing and bated breath last month, as the healthcare industry anxiously awaited what new deadline would be set in the wake of the year-long ICD-10 delay. While many providers and payers actively pushed for a concrete implementation date, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) took weeks to decide on the issue with little news to offer. The information drought finally broke on May 1, when CMS announced its intention of setting October 1, 2015, as the cut-off point for healthcare groups to implement the new coding system.

With that roadblock in the rear view mirror, what other challenges await clinics and practices as they build toward the new deadline? EHR Intelligence has outlined a few of those upcoming issues:

• Greater testing periods with payers: "My perception is that payers generally were going to reach the compliance date in 2014, but they may have had different strategies to get there given the short period of time they had left," Erik Newlin, co-chair of the WEDI ICD-10 Assessment Workgroup, told the source. "With the extra time after the delay, some payers may be looking at different technical solutions and additional options, which is probably a good thing."
• More preparation time for vendors: Healthcare providers now have 17 months, rather than five, to ready themselves for ICD-10 implementation. While some may complain that the extension undercuts the momentum that would have built with a sooner-approaching deadline, many smaller vendors will likely benefit from the extra time to properly test the ICD-10 compatibility of their products, ensuring that clinics and practices only make use of the the best chiropractic EHR software available.

You can better help your practice reap the advantages of this interim period by investing into chiropractic EHR software that effectively accommodates ICD-10 without infringing upon your regular workflow.