The True Cost of Cyber Risk in Healthcare

Cyber risk is a leadership issue — not just an IT problem.

Whether you oversee a rural health system or a large medical group, your digital infrastructure is a growing target for disruption. In 2024, over 90% of healthcare organizations experienced a cyberattack, and many were hit more than once.

Ransomware, phishing, and vendor breaches are no longer isolated IT issues. They impact every aspect of your organization, from billing and clinical operations to patient trust and public perception.

Cyber risk disrupts care, erodes margin, and shakes community trust.

Why Cyber Risk Costs More Than You Think

The financial fallout of cyber events goes far beyond the initial breach. Consider these three cost areas:

1. Revenue Disruption and Operational Downtime

Cyber events can stop claims processing, patient registration, and even care delivery. Following the Change Healthcare attack, 94% of hospitals reported financial disruption and 33% said it impacted more than half their revenue.

Action Step: Evaluate your reimbursement pipeline vulnerabilities and automate your most critical processes to eliminate the risk of human error.

2. Patient Safety and Regulatory Risk

Cyber incidents delay access to records, disrupt medication orders, and stall workflows. After the Change Healthcare attack, 74% of hospitals reported direct patient care delays.

Over two-thirds of organizations believe phishing and business attacks directly impacted patient care quality.

These disruptions don’t just threaten regulatory compliance — they jeopardize patient trust and clinical quality. Every minute a provider can’t access data increases the risk of misdiagnosis, delayed treatment, or care rework. In healthcare, cybersecurity is literally a matter life and death.

Action Step: Build business continuity plans that prioritize clinical operations, not just data recovery.

Use Case: One managed care provider partnered with Eide Bailly to implement a robotic process automation (RPA) solution for Medicaid claims. With automatic submission and confirmation emails, what previously took days now happens in minutes — reducing error, accelerating payment, and freeing staff time.

3. Operational Costs of Recovery

The average cost of a healthcare data breach in 2024 was $10 million. But the indirect costs, including staff burnout, ambulance diversion, and community mistrust, can last even longer.

Action Step for Operational Leaders: Ensure your incident response plan includes clearly defined workflows for operational continuity. Build tabletop exercises that test how frontline teams respond under pressure.

Action Step for Technical Leaders: Integrate your cyber incident response plan with IT service continuity procedures — including system failovers, data recovery timelines, and internal escalation protocols.

Use Case: Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals worked with Eide Bailly to assess gaps in their cybersecurity program. The result: a tailored roadmap that included risk scoring, governance updates, and board-level visibility.

What Healthcare Leaders Should Be Asking Now

Before you can strengthen your organization's cybersecurity defenses, you must first identify its vulnerabilities. Here are a few questions you can ask to help uncover potential weak points.

For Finance Leaders:

• What’s the financial impact of one day of downtime across billing, clinical, and administrative systems?
• Do we have reserve funds for breach recovery?

For Operational Leaders:

• How fast can our teams transition to manual workflows if systems fail?
• Are staff trained on their roles in a cyber event?

For Technical Leaders:

• Are third-party vendors part of our risk monitoring?
• Have we performed an insider threat assessment?

How to Fortify Your Healthcare Organization Against Cyber Threats

The most effective healthcare organizations treat cybersecurity as a business continuity strategy.

Here’s where to begin:

Set Strong Access & Data Controls

Only 38% of providers have fully encrypted data at rest. Controlling who has access, when, and why is foundational.

Next Steps:

• Encrypt all sensitive data at rest and in transit.
• Review admin-level access regularly.
• Close inactive accounts and uninstall legacy software.
• Enforce multi-factor authentication across all systems (over 99% of credential-based attacks could be prevented this way).

Use Automation & AI to Defend Against Attacks

Cyber threats are becoming faster and more sophisticated — and internal teams can’t keep up. While over half of healthcare organizations feel AI is very effective in helping improve their security culture, many struggle with implementing change.

Consider this:

• Gartner predicts that a lack of cybersecurity professionals will be responsible for more than half of significant cyber incidents.
• Alert fatigue leads companies of all sizes to ignore up to one third of security alerts.
• Outdated healthcare tech is one of the most significant cybersecurity concerns for healthcare professionals.

AI-enabled monitoring and robotic process automation (RPA) reduce exposure by limiting manual tasks and spotting anomalies in real time.

Next Step: Conduct an AI-readiness audit of your security tools and core workflows.

Build a Comprehensive Incident Response Plan

Healthcare organizations with formal breach response plans save an average of 58% more on total breach costs.

Your plan should include:

• A tailored risk assessment and breach scenario playbook.
• A multidisciplinary response team (not just IT).
• Annual simulation drills with documentation updates.
• A post-incident review process to inform system improvements.

The most effective security roadmaps align with organizational goals and involve leadership from day one — not just when a breach occurs.

Cyber Resilience Is Clinical Resilience

Ask yourself: Are we building a culture that values digital safety the same way we value patient safety?

The future of healthcare depends on systems that are secure, resilient, and trusted. That means making cyber strategy a foundational element of your operations — not a reactive task.

Ready to lead with confidence?

We work with rural health systems, medical groups, and senior living facilities to assess, build, and optimize their cybersecurity posture.

Because in healthcare, protecting your systems means protecting your mission. Let’s talk.