HITRUST, Children's Health program to help small practices tackle cybersecurity

All providers struggle with cybersecurity challenges, but none more so than smaller entities. Now, the Health Information Trust (HITRUST) Alliance and Children’s Health are teaming up to help them address the growing risks.

The North Texas pediatric healthcare system and HITRUST will launch CyberAid, a program geared toward physician practices with fewer than 75 employees that offers cybersecurity solutions tailored to small business, HITRUST announced Thursday. The program will identify solutions and processes for the practices to implement that are not costly and require limited technical capabilities. It also only picks out solutions that “support and align with broader industry objectives,” HITRUST said.

Children’s Health will work to make sure the physician community is educated on the importance of cybersecurity and will engage with small practices using the program. To start, there will be 80 practices that have two to 15 physicians using CyberAid.

In addition, HITRUST will track the program's effectiveness by evaluating its ability to lessen security risks, how practical it is to use and maintenance affordability, among other measures.

“Identifying solutions that address current and evolving cyberthreats--not to mention implementing and managing these solutions--is daunting for a small practice,” Pete Perialas, senior vice president and chief strategy officer at Children’s Health, said in the announcement. “Participating in current models of cyberthreat sharing can be prohibitive, whereas CyberAid puts these levels of protection within reach.”

Affording the costs of new technology often is a struggle for physician practices--in fact, new analysis from the Medical Group Management Association found that the cost of health IT can reach more than $32,500 per doctor, per year.  

To learn more:
- here’s the announcement
- read more about the program