Monadnock Community Hospital expects a technology outage that has disrupted operations since Monday to continue through Nov. 18, extending interruptions to care, communications and services at the 25-bed hospital and affiliated clinics.
The Peterborough hospital said Thursday that recovery has taken longer than expected and that full service has not been restored. Elective surgeries remain postponed, while outpatient radiology and laboratory visits have been paused. Ambulances have been redirected to other hospitals in the region.
Emergency department remains open
The hospital’s emergency department continues to see patients during the outage. Rehabilitation and physical therapy appointments also remain available, and patients can still use the online patient portal. Phone service has returned in a limited form, although the hospital said capacity remains restricted. Fax lines are still unavailable.
The disruption also affects the hospital’s clinics in Antrim and Jaffrey. Staff members have been using paper-based procedures and charts while the hospital’s computer systems remain offline.
“We are relying on downtime procedures and paper charting while servers are unavailable,” hospital spokesperson Alycia McDuff said.
Hospital officials said the outage began with problems involving the phone system and other network services. Staff have continued working through backup processes as the hospital addresses the disruption. A separate Microsoft Outlook outage affecting users nationwide also interrupted the hospital’s email access Thursday.
Services affected by the outage
- Elective surgeries have been postponed.
- Outpatient radiology and laboratory visits have been paused.
- Ambulance traffic has been redirected to other hospitals.
- Emergency, rehabilitation and physical therapy services remain available.
- Phone and fax access remains limited or unavailable, while the patient portal is accessible.
The hospital has advised patients who are trying to reach providers by phone to continue attempting to call as limited service is restored. The outage has affected the hospital’s normal communications and scheduling systems, while clinical and administrative staff use downtime procedures to maintain operations.
The hospital is now planning for the disruption to last through Nov. 18. Its emergency department remains open during the outage, while other services continue under the restrictions announced by hospital officials.
