Texas Tech Selects Challenger Program for PA Training

Memphis, Tennessee 11/08/04 - Challenger Corporation announced today that it has been selected by the Texas Tech Health Sciences Center in Midland, Texas, to provide training content and management information reporting for their Physician Assistant Training program (TTHHSC/PA). The Midland training center is one of the largest physician assistant (PA) training programs in the United States. The Challenger training and reporting relationship is believed to be the first of its kind in the United States and opens the door for the company to expand its institutional offerings to the other 135 domestic PA training centers.

With this selection, Challenger is now the provider of online resident or PA educational training and performance evaluation systems for twenty-two prominent university or hospital clinical training programs. These installations cover the specialties of family practice, emergency medicine, and obstetrics and gynecology.

Elvin E. "Ed" Maxwell is the Program Director for TTHHSC/PA. According to Maxwell, "The Program chose to add Med-Challenger FPPA to its curriculum because of the reputation of Challenger Corporation's family medicine program for training physicians. TTHHSC/PA was searching for a self-paced method for students to hone their clinical skills while on clinical rotations and assist in boards preparation. Med-Challenger was one of the methods our medical director used in preparation for re-certification in family medicine. Of all the methods he's used over the years, he felt it most helpful. This prompted our initial contact with Challenger. The Challenger program's ability to allow students to test, review, and test again along with faculty monitoring provides our program with a new method to meet the challenges of health-care education."

According to Challenger Corporation's Senior Representative for Physician Services, Becca Metzger, who negotiated the agreement, "The Texas Tech PA Program has a national reputation for high quality and superb training. This relationship with Challenger proves once again that they are leaders in implementing new and exciting technological innovations in order to help better train physician assistants. It is a great honor to be chosen by Texas Tech to assist them in their goal of improving the quality of training for the next generation of practicing PAs. In this capacity, Challenger promotes the broad national objectives of the Accreditation Review Commission on Education for the Physician Assistant (ARC-PA) in its efforts to enhance the training of physician assistants."

Challenger owns the world's largest collection of approved electronic CME media with over 2,400 approved hours of credit. Thousands of practicing physicians, residents and PAs rely upon Challenger material to prepare for specialty boards exams, re-certification, and continuous competency testing to fulfill ongoing CME requirements, and to provide reference and patient-care decision support. Challenger products are approved for physician and PA CME credit through joint sponsorships with nine prominent medical schools and three specialty societies. Currently, the company markets five retail courses for PAs in addition to its institutional training platform.

Media Contact:

Becca A. Metzger
Senior Representative for Physician Services
Challenger Corporation
5100 Poplar Ave, Suite 310
Memphis, TN 38137
Tel: (901) 762-8431
E-mail: becca.metzger@chall.com