How Common is Third-Party Vendor Risk in Healthcare?

Many healthcare organizations view vendor risk as something that happens to someone else until a trusted technology partner experiences an outage or security incident.

That perception doesn’t align with what healthcare leaders told us.

In Omega Systems’ 2026 Healthcare IT Landscape Report, 85% of healthcare organizations reported experiencing at least one operational disruption caused by a third-party vendor or vendor-of-a-vendor during the past year. At the same time, 70% said they were “confident” or “very confident” in their vendors’ cybersecurity posture, despite 63% acknowledging they do not continuously monitor those vendors or their digital supply chain.

Those findings reveal an important distinction. Confidence in a vendor’s security posture doesn’t necessarily reflect how much visibility an organization has into that vendor’s ongoing security practices.

What’s Connected to Your EMR? Understanding Your Vendor Ecosystem

It’s easy to think of an EMR as a single platform managed by a single company. In reality, modern healthcare technology environments are far more interconnected.

An EMR may depend on cloud infrastructure, identity providers, patient portals, imaging platforms, billing systems, e-prescribing tools, APIs and numerous third-party services. Some of those relationships are well understood by healthcare providers. Others exist behind the scenes as part of the vendor’s own technology ecosystem.

Every one of those connections represents another organization with access to critical systems or sensitive information. That doesn’t make those vendors insecure, but it does expand the number of environments that can affect your own. Understanding that extended ecosystem has become just as important as securing the systems your organization manages directly.

Vendor Trust vs. Vendor Verification in Healthcare IT

Healthcare depends on trusted technology partners. No medical practice can realistically build and operate every system internally, and long-term vendor relationships are often a sign of stability rather than risk.

The challenge is that trust can sometimes reduce the frequency of oversight.

Our survey found that 24% of healthcare organizations experienced a third-party breach that directly affected their data or operations during the past year. Another 24% identified lack of visibility into vendor security as one of their biggest IT concerns.

Why Operational Disruption is the Bigger EMR Risk

Cybersecurity discussions often focus on data theft, ransomware or regulatory penalties. Those risks are important, but healthcare leaders frequently think first about operational continuity.

If a critical system such as an EMR becomes unavailable, the immediate concern isn’t simply recovering data. It’s maintaining patient care.

When survey respondents were asked what would happen if their EMR became unavailable following a cyber incident:

• 53% said billing, scheduling and claims processing would stop immediately.
• 47% said losing access to patient records would create immediate patient safety risks.
• 25% said they could be forced to temporarily or permanently close because they would be unable to maintain baseline standards of care.

Those responses illustrate why third-party risk should be viewed as an operational issue rather than solely a cybersecurity issue.

Why Vendor Risk Management Doesn’t End After Procurement

Most healthcare organizations invest significant time performing vendor due diligence before selecting an EMR or other critical technology vendor. Security questionnaires are reviewed, Business Associate Agreements are executed, and compliance documentation is evaluated as part of the procurement process.

Once that relationship is established, however, those reviews often become far less frequent even though the vendor’s environment continues to evolve. Infrastructure changes, new subcontractors are introduced, cloud services expand and additional integrations are added over time.

The security posture that existed when the contract was signed may look very different several years later.

That is one reason many healthcare practices are shifting toward continuous vendor risk management rather than relying solely on periodic procurement reviews or annual compliance exercises.