American Healthways Wins Gold Award for Excellence in E-Learning; `Demonstrating the Impact of Blended Learning On Job Performance' Proves to be a Winning Program.

Business Editors/Health/Medical Writers

NASHVILLE, Tenn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 22, 2002

American Healthways (Nasdaq: AMHC), the nation's leading provider of specialized, comprehensive care enhancement services to health plans, physicians and hospitals announced today that its internal e-learning program, Bringing Real-World Situations Into the Classroom, has received a gold Excellence in E-Learning Award from brandon-hall.com and Online Learning Magazine.

This program provides American Healthways clinicians an opportunity to participate in a state-of-the-art training program before they begin actually working with program members. The Company's clinician orientation program was designed in conjunction with a team of learning scientists led by Dr. John Bransford and Little Planet Learning of Nashville, Tennessee. The program is computer-based and gives new clinicians real-life scenarios that they will face when they begin working with members over the telephone.

"From a learning and motivation standpoint, the approach is engaging for our Colleagues in training and provides opportunities for them to become familiar with the types of situations and problems that they are likely to encounter with members and how to help solve these problems," said Nick Balog, Vice President, Central Operations of American Healthways. "Our goal is to bring the real-life experiences they will face on the telephone into the classroom. Nurses are tested extensively on all relevant clinical knowledge and spend over 30 hours in one-on-one mentoring during the process."

Balog continues, "We are so proud to receive this award for best practice and we remain deeply committed to providing the best possible training opportunities to our clinical colleagues across the country. They are our key to success."

brandon-hall.com, a leading e-Learning research and consulting firm, and Online Learning Magazine sponsor the Excellence in E-Learning Awards. Now in its sixth year (formerly the Brandon Hall of Fame Awards), the awards program showcases exceptional work in the online learning industry by providing feedback and benchmarking to entrants in an overall effort to help advance the industry.

"As they have each year, the winning entries have raised the bar higher than the year before to propel the industry forward," says Brandon Hall, Ph.D., CEO of brandon-hall.com and chairman of the Excellence in E-Learning Awards program.

This year, 142 entries were submitted in four categories. Three existing categories -- Custom Content, Innovative Technology, and Performance-Centered Design Outcomes and Design Tools were joined by one new category -- Internal E-Learning Practices, the category in which American Healthways won the gold award. Entries were evaluated by more than 98 judges with expertise in instructional design and online or multimedia training and internal organizational e-Learning.

American Healthways is the nation's leading and largest provider of specialized, comprehensive care enhancement services to hospitals, physicians and health plans. In addition, American Healthways is the only company in its industry whose programs are designed to meaningfully address the needs of 100% of its customer's populations. Both the National Committee on Quality Assurance (NCQA) and the American Accreditation Healthcare Commission (URAC), have recognized the quality of the company's programs, and American Healthways is the first and only care enhancement provider in the nation to be accredited by both organizations. The Company also has contracts to provide disease and care management programs to health plans with members in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. American Healthways also operates diabetes management programs in nearly 80 hospitals nationwide.

The Excellence in E-Learning Awards program is chaired by a leading authority on e-Learning, Brandon Hall, Ph.D. Dr. Hall is the CEO of brandon-hall.com and author of the groundbreaking Web-Based Training Cookbook. Since 1992, brandon-hall.com has been providing independent expert advice in the form of published reports and phone consultations on the tools of e-Learning: LMS, LCMS, authoring tools, content providers, and any other tool that helps organizations develop successful e-learning solutions.

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    SOURCE: American Healthways