Security researchers stated that rise of cyber attacks on doctors and hospitals is costing the US health care system $6 billion a year.

They said criminals who were usually behind targeted retailer and financial firms are increasingly showing their interest in medical records of the health care system.

A recent study from the Ponemon Institute, a security research and consulting firm revealed that criminal attacks against health-care providers have doubled in past five years.

It showed the data breach is costing a hospital nearly $2.1 million. Nearly 90% of the health-care providers were affected by the data breaches in the past two years, study showed.

Security experts said that intrusions where millions of customers are exposed like the one exposed at health insurer Anthem Inc. and hospital operator Community Health Systems Inc. have raised risk awareness.

But they said that most of their peers are still not prepared for sophisticated data attacks, which cause huge losses.

Tom Kellermann, chief cybersecurity officer at Trend Micro Inc, said, “The health-care industry is being hunted and hacked by the elite financial criminal syndicates that had been targeting large financial institutions until they realized health-care databases are more valuable”.

According to Dell SecureWorks, medical records, which contain Social Security numbers, insurance IDs, addresses and medical details, sell for as much as 20 times the price of a stolen credit-card number.

Officials told that thieves after these data breaches can use that information to take out a loan or pen up a line of credit in the victim’s name, or for medical identity theft, where the victim’s insurance ID is used by an impostor seeking free medical care.

Almost half of the health-care organizations that were surveyed by Ponemon affirmed that they didn’t have sufficient technology to combat or quickly detect a breach, or the personnel with the necessary technical expertise.