Healthcare data breaches of 500 or more records, 2009-2023 (Number of Breaches)
Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR)
27 Feb 2024
Data breaches have become increasingly commonplace in the current health landscape. In 2023, there were 725 incidents of data breaches in the US, each compromising at least 500 patient records. This marked the highest number of such breaches in a year since 2009. Over this period, there have been several notable data breaches, such as the Anthem data breach in 2023 which exposed the health records of nearly 80M Americans. The attack on Change Healthcare, a subsidiary of UnitedHealthcare, halted payments for many US healthcare facilities as the company handles a third of patient records. On average, the attack cost healthcare providers more than $1B daily throughout the outage, highlighting the worsening impact of these attacks.
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