The onset of ICD-10 is fast approaching. This transition, which signifies the first change in medical coding for over 30 years, will have wide-sweeping effects throughout the healthcare industry, both in terms of overarching trends and the daily operations of individual practices. Though this shift will ultimately benefit your practice and improve the quality of care you can provide, there will inevitably be a few kinks to work through — and not all of them will stem from your office.

Recently, April Arzate of the Texas revenue cycle and healthcare analytics company MediGain spoke to HealthCare IT News about one potential disruption that could be particularly detrimental for smaller practices if they aren't prepared for it: Delays in reimbursement.

Even if you have the best chiropractic EHR software on hand, there is still a chance that processing difficulties will occur as other insurers, government agencies and health care providers struggle to make heads or tails of the new coding regulations. With that in mind, Arzate recommends that medical practitioners keep a sizable amount of cash on hand in the event of a cash flow problem.

"You may not have to have it on hand, but you need to have the resources available," said Arzate.

So how much money are we talking? According to Arzate, chiropractors should attempt to accrue enough funds to cover all of the operational expenses of your practice for three to six months, including rent, payroll and other essentials.

Finding these funds can be challenging enough when you don't have the looming specters of meaningful use stage 2 and ICD-10 to contend with, but you will be thankful for this extra effort if any reimbursement complications crop up further down the line. In addition, by investing in intuitive chiropractic management software that is already equipped to work with ICD-10, you can continue to focus on caring for your patients in the midst of all these changes.