Rocky Mountain Gastroenterology Associates PLLC, a healthcare provider, agreed to a class action settlement after a September 2024 cyberattack that may have exposed patients’ private information. Healthcare organizations are frequent targets because they store high-value data used for both financial fraud and “medical identity theft,” where someone uses another person’s identity to obtain care, prescriptions, or insurance benefits. People who received a breach notification from the practice can submit claims for up to $1,000 in documented, unreimbursed losses tied to the incident (incurred between Sept. 1, 2024, and Feb. 2, 2026) and can obtain two years of credit and medical identity monitoring. The lawsuit was filed on the theory that the practice failed to implement and maintain “reasonable security measures,” a common legal claim in data-breach class actions seeking to hold organizations accountable for preventable lapses and to compensate consumers for mitigation costs (like bank fees, monitoring, postage, or travel related to resolving fraud). Even though the defendant denies wrongdoing, settlements like this matter because they can set practical expectations for what “reasonable” cybersecurity looks like in healthcare and because they provide a standardized process for affected patients—including minors, via parents or guardians—to obtain reimbursement and monitoring without having to sue individually. More broadly, this case fits a well-established pattern in healthcare breach litigation: plaintiffs often pursue negligence and consumer-protection theories, while defendants point to the complexity of cybercrime and contest whether plaintiffs can show concrete harm; many cases resolve with monitoring plus limited reimbursement rather than large cash payments to everyone. The regulatory backdrop is also significant: healthcare entities and their vendors operate under HIPAA’s Privacy and Security Rules and the HITECH Act’s breach-notification requirements, which require safeguards for protected health information and timely notice when a breach is suspected. As regulators and courts continue scrutinizing incident response, vendor management, and basic controls like access limits and encryption, these settlements reinforce that healthcare cybersecurity is not just an IT issue but a patient-safety and compliance obligation that can carry real legal and financial consequences.