“Consumers have long been choosing alternative medicine and integrative healthcare services supported by ABC codes, and the demand for these services will only grow stronger as consumer-driven healthcare programs gain in popularity,” said Synthia Molina, chief executive officer of Alternative Link.  “The new set of ABC codes provides better ways to track health-related activities and expenses associated with consumer-driven healthcare.”

Consumer-driven healthcare advocates can enhance their current offerings by using any of more than 600 ASCII, PDF, SQL database and soft cover ABC coding products available at www.AlternativeLink.com.  The codes are supported by hierarchic descriptions of care, expanded definitions of care, practitioner identifiers, relative values and legal practice guidelines—all essential for controlling healthcare costs and offering the kind of care today’s consumers demand.

“ABC codes can help document care delivered by more than 3 million integrative healthcare practitioners in more than 1.4 billion outpatient visits each year,” said Mark Painter, president of Relative Value Studies, Inc., the publisher of Relative Values for Integrative Healthcare, which utilizes coding nomenclature developed by Alternative Link. “This compares to some 800,000 conventional physicians and 1.1 billion office visits supported by other medical codes.”

Prior to the development of ABC codes, the cost-effective practices of integrative healthcare practitioners remained largely invisible to both health policymakers and consumers.  The new code set helps improve benefit plan design, managed care and provider contracting, utilization and clinical practice management, claims processing, outcomes research and a variety of actuarial analyses. 

ABC codes reflect the professional vocabularies of acupuncturists, Ayurvedic doctors, behavioral healthcare workers, bodyworkers, chiropractors, culturally competent caregivers, holistic dentists, holistic physicians, homeopaths, indigenous medicine practitioners, massage therapists, mental healthcare practitioners, midwives, naturopaths, nurses, nutritionists, Oriental medicine practitioners, osteopaths, social workers, somatic educators, spiritual and prayer based healers and others. Forthcoming codes will reflect care delivered by dental hygienists, occupational therapists, pharmacists, physical therapists, and others. 

ABC codes may be used in research, management and manual commerce applications by anyone, since these uses are unregulated. In electronic commerce, the federal government considers ABC codes HIPAA-compliant when used by more than 10,000 code set registrants and millions of their trading partners in accordance with HIPAA regulations (45 CFR 162.940).

For more information about the supplemental ABC codes for consumer-driven healthcare, please visit www.AlternativeLink.com, or contact Synthia Molina at 505.875.0001, ext. 203.

Alternative Link (www.AlternativeLink.com), the developer of ABC codes, delivers information products and consulting services that help health-promoting organizations and professionals finance, administer and deliver cost-effective care that improves individual and public health, business and industry efficiencies and socioeconomic development.

Relative Value Studies, Inc. (www.rvsdata.com) supports healthcare providers, consultants and payers with tools for establishing, defending and negotiating fees for medical, surgical, dental and integrative healthcare procedures.