Only 19% of practice leaders very confident in cyberattack recovery
- 19% of medical group leaders are very confident of quick cyberattack recovery.
- 61% said somewhat confident and 21% not confident in MGMA’s Oct. 6 poll.
- Vendor dependence was the most cited weak link among somewhat-confident leaders.
- 80% of AMA survey respondents lost revenue after the Change Healthcare outage.
COLORADO, UNITED STATES — Fewer than one in five medical group leaders are very confident their practice could bounce back quickly from a cyberattack, and the weak spot many of them name sits outside their own walls. Among practices that feel only somewhat prepared, dependence on electronic health record (EHR), IT and other third-party vendors is the most cited concern.
Confidence slips at the top
Asked how confident they are that their practice could recover quickly from a cyberattack, 19% of medical group leaders said very, 61% said somewhat and 21% said not confident, according to an Oct. 6 MGMA Stat poll with 238 applicable responses.
Compared with a similar January 2025 poll, the very-confident share slipped from 20%, the not-confident share fell from 27% and the somewhat-confident group grew from 54%.
MGMA said the shift suggests more organizations believe they have some recovery capability but still see meaningful gaps in their preparedness.
Several respondents noted they would not know how well their measures work until they face a significant attack.
Vendors and staffing are the weak links
Very confident leaders most often pointed to tested backups, documented incident response plans, experienced IT teams and strong vendor support, and several cited a past cyberattack as the reason they now test regularly. Leaders who were not confident cited a lack of dedicated IT or cybersecurity staff, funding concerns and uncertainty about outsourced IT support.
The cost of a vendor failure shows up in the revenue cycle. In an informal American Medical Association survey after the Change Healthcare outage, 80% of respondents reported lost revenue from unpaid claims and 85% put extra staff time into revenue cycle work.
“The forensics belonged to a vendor yet the cash problem belonged to the practice,” MGMA wrote.
MGMA’s checklist starts with backups that someone has actually restored and downtime procedures that cover claims processing, not just the practice’s own systems.
It also tells practices to list every vendor that touches cash flow, from the clearinghouse to payroll, and to note what each contract promises on notification and restoration time.
For practices that rely on partners for billing and IT, the poll is a reminder that a vendor’s outage quickly becomes the practice’s cash problem. Teams that outsource medical billing or managed services should ask partners to spell out notification and restoration timelines in their contracts and to take part in downtime drills. Practices comparing partners can review the top U.S. healthcare outsourcing companies.
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Disclosure: Outsource Accelerator uses AI tools in the backend of its editorial workflow. Every article is reviewed and verified by a human editor before publication.
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