When Congress and President Obama decided earlier this year to delay the nationwide implementation of ICD-10 — a date that was subsequently set for October 1, 2015, by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) — one may have believed that this was a necessary move. Up until that decision was made, many providers and payers in the healthcare industry had made no secret of the fact that they were worried about whether or not they would be ready in time for the October 2014 start date, especially as they had to contend with Meaningful Use Stage 2 adoption within that same time frame.

But when the delay was made official, many groups complained about the move, claiming that an extra year of waiting would effectively deflate all of the momentum that had been building in the industry toward a 2014 deadline. Now a new survey has corroborated this concern, even adding that many healthcare payers would have been ready to go had the original 2014 date held.

The new poll was conducted by the performance management consultancy Enkata, whose chief marketing officer, Dan Enthoven, wrote that the vast majority of the industry's payers "were uniformly ready or on track to be ready" for ICD-10's October 2014 deadline.

"[In the spring payer survey] only a single respondent said they were slightly behind schedule," Enthoven wrote on Enkata's blog. "People involved in claims processing didn't want the delay. By a ratio of 4 to 1, payers said the delay shouldn't have happened."

Nevertheless, the delay has happened, and while it may not have been at the top of the industry's wish list, it still provides plenty of extra preparation time to implement new chiropractic EHR software that can help ensure a smooth transition to ICD-10 next year.