In the last week, Powell Valley Healthcare staff received roughly 3,000 emails in work accounts.

Information Security Officer Dustin Cole said at Monday night's hospital board meeting that the department blocked another 5,500 bad emails.

Recently, he said, the department has upgraded licenses and firewalls to better stop bad emails and provide more tools to combat issues such as phishing.

Josh Baxter, information technology director for PVHC, said previously IT staff have always received level 1 or 3 licenses, but this time all staff received a level 5 license.

"This gives better security reporting and compliance stuff, and has unlocked many more tools," Baxter said.

One of those tools, Cole said, is the ability to send out test phishing emails. If staff click on the fake email they are directed to tips to avoid phishing emails in the future. If they ignore the email they're congratulated.

"We just did one and the numbers were better than ones we did previously," he said.

He said they're always prepared for better scam attempts — lately that's been texts seeming to come from CEO Joy Coulston.

"That's the trend that's been happening," he said. "And it's going to get worse."