Some Maine hospitals have had to divert ambulances after falling victim to cyberattacks, the Morning Sentinel reported.
St. Mary’s Regional Medical Center and Central Maine Medical Center, both in Lewiston, have sent ambulances to other hospitals in recent weeks as they deal with IT outages, according to the June 15 story.
“Recently, we actually ended up not transporting to Central Maine Medical Center because they had no computers,” Gardiner, Maine, Fire Chief Rick Sieberg told the news outlet. “They were literally doing handwritten reports. So the crews ended up going over to St. Mary’s because they could at least take patients in.”
Central Maine Healthcare did not respond to the publication’s request for comment, while a spokesperson for Covenant Health, which operates St. Mary’s, said the hospital was no longer on diversion.
“It is important to note that these cases are uncommon in the St. Mary’s ED under normal circumstances,” the spokesperson said. “We were able to continue care in the ED, the hospital and our provider practices during this time without disruption thanks to long-established downtime procedures.”
