For months, healthcare providers and medical practices have been holding their breath over the implementation of ICD-10. The new coding language for clinics and chiropractic EHR use is a long overdue replacement for the decades-old ICD-9, helping to bring practices more into the 21st century, streamlining administrative tasks and allocating more time for patient care. But the onset of ICD-10 had a strict October 1, 2014 deadline, worrying many practitioners who weren't sure if they would be able to make the upgrade in time.

Luckily for those behind schedule, President Obama offered a reprieve this week when he signed into law a new fix on the Medicare Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR). The SGR patch contained a provision for extending the ICD-10 deadline by a year, now setting it at October 1, 2015. While some may be breathing a sigh of relief over this development, many providers—who, as EHR Intelligence reports, carry the "lion's share of the burdens associated with ICD-10 implementation"— are not pleased by the delay.

"Further delay of ICD-10 discredits the considerable investment made by stakeholders across the country to modernize healthcare delivery," Russell Branzell, CEO and President of the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME), told EHR Intelligence. "Providers have already dedicated significant time and resources in financing, training and implementing the necessary changes to workflow and clinical documentation. Any disruption to the ICD-10 transition at this stage would be detrimental."

As the source adds, while these providers had been facing an uphill battle in getting the technology upgrades, training programs and new chiropractic documentation software in place, the last six months prior to the deadline would have helped generate enough momentum to meet their goal.

For those who simply weren't going to be ready by October, though, the new extension offers practices another year to bring their chiropractic EHR software up-to-date.