Industry Benchmark
IAM Maturity Benchmark for Healthcare
Healthcare sits above the cross-industry floor but below financial services: HIPAA forces access discipline, while clinical workflows push back on it daily.
- Industry base
- 1.3 on the 0 to 4 scale
- Confidence
- Derived estimate
- At 10,000 identities, North America
- 1.24
- Scope
- Workforce (separate CIAM base)
The Starting Point
Why Healthcare Starts at 1.3
Hospital systems juggle shared workstations, rotating residents, traveling nurses, and thousands of clinical applications that predate modern identity standards. HIPAA and state privacy laws demand minimum-necessary access, yet the operational reality of a night shift makes strict enforcement hard to sustain. The research base reflects that tension.
Provider organizations also carry unusually high identity churn relative to headcount, and third-party access (locums, billing vendors, device technicians) widens the attack surface. Programs that solve deprovisioning and privileged access for clinical systems tend to pull well ahead of this benchmark.
Source: Published industry research (2024-25). Confidence grading and citations are documented in the methodology.
Adjustments
What Shifts the Number
The base of 1.3 is adjusted for organization size and for region. Both tables below are computed with the same engine function the assessment runs, so they match what your results page would show. The exact parameterization is part of the licensed methodology.
Organization size (North America)
Expectations rise on a log curve: each step up in estate size moves the benchmark less than the last.
| Managed identities | Benchmark |
|---|---|
| 500 | 0.65 |
| 2,500 | 0.97 |
| 10,000 | 1.24 |
| 50,000 | 1.56 |
| 250,000 | 1.70 |
| 1,000,000 | 1.70 |
Region (at 10,000 identities)
Regional factors reflect documented differences in identity program adoption across markets.
| Region | Benchmark |
|---|---|
| North America | 1.24 |
| Western Europe | 1.30 |
| Eastern Europe | 1.18 |
| APAC Developed (Japan, Australia, Singapore) | 1.24 |
| APAC Emerging (India, SEA) | 1.12 |
| Middle East | 1.30 |
| Latin America | 1.06 |
| Africa | 1.06 |
By Domain
Expected Maturity by Domain
The overall benchmark is not flat across domains. Privileged access carries the highest expectation; newer capability areas carry lower ones. Values below apply the per-domain adjustments to the Healthcare benchmark at 10,000 identities in North America, capped at the 4.0 scale maximum.
| Domain | Adjustment | Expected maturity |
|---|---|---|
| IGA | 1.00 | 1.24 |
| PAM | 1.10 | 1.36 |
| Auth/SSO | 1.05 | 1.30 |
| Cloud | 0.80 | 0.99 |
| Security | 0.85 | 1.05 |
| Governance | 1.00 | 1.24 |
Workforce-scope domains shown. CIAM-scope assessments follow the CIAM benchmark treatment described below.
Read This Before Comparing
What This Benchmark Is, and Is Not
Customer identity (CIAM) scope
CIAM assessments for Healthcare use a separate customer-identity base rather than the workforce number. At the reference scenario (10,000 identities, North America), the CIAM-scope benchmark is 1.15 against 1.24 for workforce scope.
A research prior, refined over time
This number is a research-derived estimate (derived estimate), not a survey of Healthcare organizations run by AXIS. It sits at tier 4 of the 4-tier benchmark system: the fallback that is always available. As the pool of consented assessments grows, peer data blends into the estimate and gradually outweighs the prior, with the blend disclosed on every results page. Current pool coverage is published on the benchmark status page.
Interactive
Tune the Healthcare Benchmark to Your Organization
Adjust size, region, and scope. The result comes from the same engine function the assessment uses.
Between 100 and 5,000,000.
Benchmark 1.24 of 4 for Healthcare in North America.
Research benchmark
1.24
on the 0 to 4 maturity scale, for Healthcare in North America
- Industry base: 1.3 for Healthcare (derived estimate).
- Size: At 10,000 identities, the expectation matches a 10,000-identity peer at the same settings.
- Region: North America matches the North America baseline at these inputs.
- Scope: Workforce scope applies the industry base directly.
This is the research-derived prior (tier 4 of the benchmark system). Assessments blend in consented peer data where enough of it exists.
Other Industry Benchmarks
Financial Services
1.6Financial services carries the highest starting expectation of any industry in the AXIS model, the product of decades of audit pressure on access controls.
Energy & Utilities
1.4Energy and utilities benchmark above the general floor, pulled up by NERC CIP obligations and years of nation-state attention on critical infrastructure.
Technology/SaaS
1.4Technology and SaaS companies benchmark above the floor: cloud-native tooling gets adopted early, but integration sprawl and machine identities erode the advantage.
Manufacturing
1.2Manufacturing starts at the research floor: plant-level autonomy, OT environments, and serial acquisitions leave identity fragmented across sites.
Public Sector
1.2Public sector organizations start at the research floor, constrained by budget cycles, legacy systems, and procurement timelines that outlast most modernization plans.
Retail
1.2Retail starts at the research floor: thin margins, seasonal workforce churn, and a compliance regime that concentrates on cardholder data rather than identity breadth.
See Where You Stand Against This Benchmark
The assessment scores your program across every domain above, then plots it against the Healthcare expectation at your size and region. About 20 minutes, no signup required to start.