HITRUST Assessment XChange™ (XChange), a wholly-owned subsidiary of HITRUST®, is providing healthcare organizations free access to its third-party risk management (TPRM) solution, including methodologies, technology, and staff augmentation. The decision to provide the service free of charge was made after discussions with leaders in the healthcare industry concerning operational challenges, financial impacts, and disruptions being faced by organizations across the healthcare ecosystem and the direct effect on supply chain management caused by COVID-19.
The impact of COVID-19 on supply chain management relates to organizations attempting to vet and onboard new third parties in an expeditious manner as well as maintain assurances from current third parties, while cyber threats and other risks continue to escalate in a time of distracted, remote, or limited resources. This is compounded as they work to ensure the integrity of the risk management process is preserved, and not introducing additional complexity and costs to themselves or their third parties.
“Breaches involving third parties continue to create substantial disruptions and costs, as well as risk to the entire health ecosystem,” said John Houston, Esq., Vice President, Privacy, and Information Security & Associate Counsel Information Assurance Services, UPMC. “Now more than ever, we need to collaborate in adopting approaches that can reduce the risk and improve efficiencies in third-party risk management.”
The XChange solution empowers organizations around the world to evaluate and gain visibility into the risk posed by their third parties, including managing and maintaining risk assessment and compliance information for them in an efficient and effective manner. It minimizes duplicative and inconsistent assessment requirements imposed by customers on their third parties, which reduces costs and increases efficiencies throughout the entire ecosystem. It streamlines identifying the level of risk posed by a third party based on organizational criteria and automates the process to obtain and maintain appropriate assurances in a timely manner.
The solution is comprehensive and fully integrated, allowing it to be leveraged by organizations of varying sizes. Healthcare providers, wellness management companies, distributors, manufacturers, and payors can use the service for two years at no cost. It includes functionality to address third-party pre-qualification, risk triage, risk assessment, risk mitigation, risk evaluation, third-party qualification, and risk monitoring. In addition, designated Onboarding Specialists help expedite and streamline the process of loading and engaging third parties.
“Most of us in the industry face the same challenges in evaluating and managing third-party risk, so adopting and leveraging a single approach is the most efficient and effective manner to achieve our mutual goal and further industry collaboration,” said Omar Khawaja, Vice President, Chief Information Security Officer, Highmark Health. “I believe the approach outlined by the Provider TPRM Council, in conjunction with the offering from the XChange, allows us to achieve that industry goal, which now is more important than ever.”
As a leader in information risk management, HITRUST understands and has studied the challenges associated with TPRM, specifically in evaluating and assessing the risk a third-party relationship poses to an organization and the impact on the supply chain ecosystem with inconsistent assurance approaches.
“Over the past few weeks, I’ve been speaking with many leaders in the healthcare industry whose teams are feeling overwhelmed by the COVID-19 pandemic and seeking additional support and opportunities for collaboration,” said Daniel Nutkis, Founder and CEO, HITRUST. “Making the XChange solution available free of charge to the healthcare industry is one of the ways we can help support and drive collaboration in the industry.”
The HITRUST TPRM Methodology and the XChange are widely adopted across the healthcare industry, including by leading organizations such as Advent Health, Allegany Health Network, Cleveland Clinic, Highmark, Mayo Clinic, Tufts Medical Center, University of Rochester Medical Center, UPMC, and Vanderbilt University Medical Center, as well as leveraged by the Provider TPRM Council.
To get information and have a representative reach out to you about the XChange solution, please complete this form: https://hitrustax.com/limited-offer/.
To learn more about the Provider TPRM Council, click https://www.ptprm.org/.
About HITRUST Assessment XChange
The HITRUST Assessment XChange (XChange), a wholly owned subsidiary of HITRUST Services Corp., is designed to be an extension of an organization’s third-party risk management program. With the XChange, organizations have the ability to assess the inherent risk of their business relationships through customized questionnaires, as well as maintain constant visibility into their third parties’ assessment statuses before, during, and after the assessment process. This ensures that organizations can effectively understand and manage risk across their third-party ecosystems. The HITRUST XChange Manager platform streamlines and simplifies the process of managing and maintaining risk assessment and compliance information from third parties. For more information, visit https://hitrustax.com/.
About HITRUST®
Since it was founded in 2007, HITRUST has championed programs that safeguard sensitive information and manage information risk for organizations across all industries and throughout the third-party supply chain. In collaboration with privacy, information security and risk management leaders from the public and private sectors, HITRUST develops, maintains, and provides broad access to its widely adopted common risk and compliance management frameworks as well as related assessment and assurance methodologies. For more information, visit www.hitrustalliance.net.
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