ST. LOUIS, March 20, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Express Scripts (NASDAQ: ESRX) announced today that it has been recognized by the Ethisphere Institute, an independent center of research promoting best practices in corporate ethics and governance, as a 2014 World's Most Ethical Company®.

The award recognizes organizations that continue to raise the bar on ethical leadership and corporate behavior. World's Most Ethical Company honorees understand the correlation between ethics, reputation and daily interactions with their brand. Express Scripts is one of only eight companies in the healthcare services industry and the only pharmacy benefit manager to be honored this year.

"Tens of millions of people trust Express Scripts to manage their pharmacy benefit, and we work to earn that trust with an unwavering commitment to ethical behavior, good governance and alignment to the best interests of clients and patients," said Christine Wiehl, Vice President and Chief Compliance Officer, Express Scripts. "While we are proud to be honored by Ethisphere, we are even prouder of what we do every day to help make the use of prescription drugs safer and more affordable."

"The entire community of World's Most Ethical Companies believe that customers, employees, investors and regulators place a high premium on trust and that ethics and good governance are key in earning it," said Ethisphere's Chief Executive Officer, Timothy Erblich. "Express Scripts joins an exclusive community committed to driving performance through leading business practices. We congratulate everyone at Express Scripts for this extraordinary achievement."

The World's Most Ethical Company assessment is based upon the Ethisphere Institute's Ethics Quotient™ framework. The Ethics Quotient framework has been developed over years of effort to provide a means to assess an organization's performance in an objective, consistent and standardized way. The information collected provides a comprehensive sampling of definitive criteria of core competencies, rather than all aspects of corporate governance, risk, sustainability, compliance and ethics. The Ethics Quotient framework and methodology was determined, vetted and refined by the expert advice and insights gleaned from Ethisphere's network of thought leaders and from the World's Most Ethical CompanyMethodology Advisory Panel.

Scores are generated in five key categories: ethics and compliance program (25%), reputation, leadership and innovation (20%), governance (10%), corporate citizenship and responsibility (25%) and culture of ethics (20%).

­­The full list of the 2014 World's Most Ethical Companies can be found at http://ethisphere.com/worlds-most-ethical/wme-honorees/.

About the Ethisphere Institute

The Ethisphere® Institute is an independent center of research, best practices and thought leadership that promotes best practices in corporate ethics and governance and enables organizations to improve compliance, mitigate risk, and enhance relationships with employees, business partners, investors and the broad regulatory community. Ethisphere evaluates and benchmarks compliance and governance programs, honors superior achievement through its World's Most Ethical Companies® recognition program and publishes Ethisphere Magazine. Ethisphere is also the leading provider of independent verification of corporate ethics and compliance programs that include: Ethics Inside® Certification, Compliance Leader Verification™ and Anti-Corruption Program Verification™. More information about Ethisphere can be found at: www.ethisphere.com.

About Express Scripts

Express Scripts (NASDAQ: ESRX) manages more than a billion prescriptions each year for tens of millions of patients. On behalf of our clients - employers, health plans, unions and government health programs - we make the use of prescription drugs safer and more affordable. Express Scripts uniquely combines three capabilities - behavioral sciences, clinical specialization and actionable data - to create Health Decision Science(SM), our innovative approach to help individuals make the best drug choices, pharmacy choices and health choices. Better decisions mean healthier outcomes.

Headquartered in St. Louis, Express Scripts provides integrated pharmacy-benefit management services, including network-pharmacy claims processing, home delivery, specialty benefit management, benefit-design consultation, drug-utilization review, formulary management, and medical and drug data analysis services. The company also distributes a full range of biopharmaceutical products and provides extensive cost-management and patient-care services.

For more information, visit Lab.Express-Scripts.com or follow @ExpressScripts on Twitter.

MEDIA CONTACT:

Brian Henry
Office: 314-684-6438
bhenry@express-scripts.com

INVESTOR CONTACT:

SOURCE Express Scripts

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