Causes of U.S. healthcare data breaches in 2022

In 2022, most healthcare data breaches in the United States happened as a result of hacking or IT-related incidents. The number of such cases was 555 in the examined year. The next-most common cause for data breaches was unauthorized access or disclosure, detected in 113 cases. Loss and theft of data were less common causes of data breaches in the U.S. healthcare system in 2022. Overall, in 2022, there were 707 data breaches of over 500 records in the U.S. healthcare industry.

Most common causes of healthcare data breaches in the United States in 2022, by number of data breaches

Characteristic	Number of data breaches by cause
Hacking/IT incident	555
Unauthorized access/disclosure	113
Loss/theft	35
Improper disposal	4

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Release date

January 2023

More information

Region

United States

Survey time period

2022

Supplementary notes

Data breaches as reported by healthcare providers, health plans, healthcare clearing houses and business associates of those entities. The data includes data breaches currently under investigation as well as archived cases.

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