Stop Rehearsing the Workaround
Downtime readiness is becoming a real discipline. Two of its trends stop at the workaround, and the two that matter most for 2026 have not been set yet. Revenue-cycle leaders have started writing downtime plans, and the discipline is overdue. A cyber incident stopped being an IT problem the moment it started stopping cash flow. Sophos counted 67% of healthcare organizations hit by ransomware in a single year (Sophos, 2024), and the guidance now circulating gets the stakes right. When the systems go down, claims do not go out and money does not come in. The plan it prescribes is careful: paper claim forms kept current, offline read-only copies of billing data, credentials tracked and rotated, downtime drills run quarterly.
July 16, 2026
