» Healthcare organizations battling the COVID-19 pandemic have also faced heightened cybersecurity threats from hackers looking to take advantage of the crisis caused by the outbreak. Email security firm GreatHorn analyzed a representative sampling of 1 billion emails sent in January, February and March and found that there were 15 times as many phishing attacks during the first two weeks of March as there were for the entire month of January. In addition, coronavirus-related email threats more than doubled from February to March.
» Telephone-based cognitive behavioral therapy seems to be an effective intervention for treating depression in people who have Parkinson’s disease. It outperforms treatment-as-usual on all depression, anxiety and quality-of-life measures, according to a study published in Neurology. The biggest differences in outcomes between the treatment-as-usual and the CBT group weren’t evident until six months after the treatment ended, the researchers noted.
» Ninety percent of skilled nursing facility administrators say that due to scarce nursing personnel, facilities have had to employ agency and per-diem clinical staff, for which they have no validation system to check their COVID-19 exposure status. This information is according to an April survey of 880 long-term care providers from 41 states, conducted by Black Book research.
» Georgia-based WellStar Health System is partnering with PatientPing, a Boston-based health technology company, to use its care coordination technology across the health system. The partnership will encompass WellStar’s 11 hospitals, eight urgent care centers, three skilled nursing facilities and three inpatient hospices, among other locations within the system. Providers across Georgia will be notified when their patients are admitted, discharged or transferred to and from a WellStar facility.
» The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released an app that connects electronic case reports to existing health IT infrastructure, giving public health agencies real-time access to data.
