Which States are the Most Impacted by Healthcare Data Breaches?

Since data breaches are increasing at an exponential rate, it is becoming even more important to keep an eye on how your records are being treated within the systems they inhabit.Data breachesare defined as ‘security breaches where someone gains unauthorized access to data. During 2024, the average cost of a data breach reached$4.88 million.

Data submitted to U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights (OCR), reveals a high number of data breaches in 2024. The number of data breaches in 2025 is on track to exceed this with as many as 214 breaches reported between January and April.

Here at KnownHost, a study was conducted to analyze the number of submitted healthcare data breaches with OCR to gain insight into which area is the most at risk across the United States. The analysis focused on the number of submitted breaches along with how many established healthcare records were impacted at the time OCR was accessed.

States with the Most Healthcare Records Impacted by Data Breaches

Minnesota tops the list, with the largest number of impacted healthcare records. Over 191 million records have been exposed in the last 2 years in 21 data breaches. The largest of these was the Change Healthcare breach which occurred in 2024, which cost the company over $2 billion to help those affected.

California is the second most impacted state, with 22.6 million healthcare records affected in 46 breaches, followed by Tennessee with 16.1 million records impacted in 29 breaches.

Texas has the highest number of data breaches across the study with 67 but is in fourth place with the number of records exposed. In total, 14.5 million records were impacted.

Missouri and New York are in fifth and sixth position respectively, with Missouri experiencing 15 data breaches over the past two years that amounted to 8.7 million records impacted, while New York had 60 data breaches which affected 8.5 million records.

Connecticut is seventh for the most impacted healthcare records with 7.1 million records exposed across 16 breaches. Florida is in eighth position with 36 data breaches impacting 6.7 million healthcare records.

In ninth place is New Jersey which experienced 23 data breaches in just over two years, which affected 4.9 million healthcare records.

Utah is in tenth, with the fewest data breaches at 4, but still a high number of impacted healthcare records with 4.3 million.

States with the Least Healthcare Records Impacted by Data Breaches

On the other end of the scale, Nevada has the fewest number of records impacted with 3.1 thousand records exposed. This was due to 1 data breach which occurred in December 2024.

The District of Columbia had the second fewest with 4.1 thousand records impacted across 2 breaches. In third position is Oregon which saw 10.4 thousand healthcare records exposed in 4 breaches. Alaska is in fourth position, with 10.7 thousand records affected across 2 breaches. In fifth is New Mexico with 10.9 thousand records impacted across 3 data breaches.

In sixth place is West Virginia, which experienced 2 data breaches, which led to 11.6 thousand records being impacted. Montana is next with 4 breaches impacting 24.5 thousand records.

North Dakota and New Hampshire finish the top ten, both with 4 data breaches. However in North Dakota 52.4 thousand records were impacted while New Hampshire has nearly double this with 93.3 thousand records impacted in just over two years.

Conclusion

As the risk of data breaches continue to increase year on year, it is essential for companies and corporations to ensure that they are increasing cybersecurity measures, upscaling monitoring and security teams and ensuring they are meeting strict compliance to provide the best protection. Furthermore, while AI is becoming a tool used to perpetuate these attacks, it is also in turn being integrated into security operations to resolve breaches with faster speeds and reducing costs.

To conclude, as these risks grow, it is important to improve and scale security capabilities in response to ensure that breaches can be detected quickly and contained with the correct protocols.

Metholodgy

For this study, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service for Civil Rights Breach Report was analyzed to extract which states had the largest number of data breaches currently submitted and largest number of impacted healthcare records between February 2023 and April 2025.

The data was accessed on the 13th of May 2025.

This study excludes the states Vermont and Wyoming as they have no breaches submitted at the time the data was accessed.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Service for Civil Rights Breach Report: https://ocrportal.hhs.gov/ocr/breach/breach_report.jsf

If you’d like to view the full data, you can do so here.