The ABC codes, developed by ABC Coding Solutions over the past 22 years, have been field-tested for 15 years by state Medicaid agencies, Medicare, providers and insurers. During that time, use of ABC codes have (1) increased direct access to care delivered by the majority of healthcare professionals – those who are not conventional doctors; (2) communicated treatments and costs in standard electronic claim and payment transactions; (3) generated data, as claims were filed, that quantified healthcare options to conventional medicine that are cost effective and non-invasive; and (4) required minimal time and training to use. After using ABC codes to process about 300,000 patient visits in one year, Alaska Medicaid quantified that it saved 50% of costs it would have incurred had it not used ABC codes. The ABC codes provide a logical means of increasing access to care while reducing costs in an era when US healthcare costs exceed 20% of our gross national product. "The existing medical coding does not adequately represent the services delivered by the vast majority of licensed health care practitioners (2.7 million nurses, 150,000 nurse practitioners and all of the complementary medicine providers), therefore accurate actuarial data cannot be generated to sort out what works from what does not. ABC codes have been successfully piloted in several of the state Medicaid programs and demonstrated real healthcare costs savings.” ~Brian M. Berman, M.D., Director of the Center of Integrative Medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine