Monadnock Community Hospital network outage likely to last through November 18

The hospital has not explained what caused the network failure or detailed all of its effects on patient care.

Monadnock Community Hospital said Thursday that the technology failure disrupting its operations is still unresolved and is expected to continue into next week.

The hospital said in a Facebook update that recovery has taken longer than planned and that it does not yet have a firm date for restoring full service. Officials said they are now bracing for the outage to extend through November 18.

The 25-bed hospital first acknowledged problems with its phone system and other network services on Monday. Since then, it has put off elective surgeries and paused outpatient radiology and lab visits. Ambulance traffic has also been redirected to other hospitals in the region, and the same disruption has affected the hospital’s clinics in Antrim and Jaffrey, according to officials.

Even with the outage, the emergency department is still operating, and patients continue to be seen, the hospital said Thursday. Rehabilitation and physical therapy visits are still moving forward, and the patient portal remains available. Phone service has returned in a limited form, though capacity is still restricted, while fax lines are still down. Later Thursday, the hospital also said email access was interrupted by a separate Microsoft Outlook outage affecting users nationwide.

The hospital has not explained what caused the network failure or detailed all of its effects on patient care. Staff members have been referring to paper-based backup processes while computer systems remain offline. Alycia McDuff, a hospital spokesperson, said Thursday afternoon that the organization is relying on downtime procedures and paper charting while servers are unavailable.

Some patients have reported difficulty getting through to providers by phone, even after being told to keep trying. One of them, Alisha Lapinski of Fitzwilliam, said repeated calls had been hard to manage while she was at work.

Lapinski took her 11-year-old daughter Brielle to the emergency department on Sunday after the child was hurt during a football game. She believed Brielle may have broken her thumb and said the lack of access to electronic records slowed the evaluation process. According to Lapinski, staff used a portable X-ray machine, but the image could not be sent electronically to radiology for review that day.

She said the child was discharged with a brace and told to return for follow-up imaging on Monday. By Thursday, however, Lapinski said the X-ray still had not been formally read by radiology, despite several attempts to reach both the radiology department and her daughter’s primary care doctor.

In its latest update, the hospital said information about what services are available will continue to be posted daily while IT workers and outside specialists work around the clock to fix the problem. The hospital said maintaining patient safety and continuity of care remains its main priority.