LEWISTON (WGME)— Lewiston’s two hospitals are back online after experiencing cybersecurity incidents about a month ago.
Representatives for St. Mary’s Regional Medical Center and Central Maine Healthcare (CMH) say that phone lines and online patient portals have been restored and are now fully operational.
Despite the progress, some patients remain frustrated.
Tom Powell, who was scheduled for knee replacement surgery at CMH on June 11, says the procedure still hasn’t happened.
“I would have liked somebody to call me,” Powell said. “Am I still a patient of this doctor? Are they still going to try and schedule a CAT scan?”
Powell’s surgery was canceled about 10 days after the hospital’s phone and computer systems went offline due to the cyber incident.
CMH CEO Steve Littleson apologized to patients affected by the disruption and praised his staff for continuing patient care during the outage.
“We have emerged a stronger, more secure health system,” Littleson said in a statement.
Across town, St. Mary’s faced a similar issue. A spokesperson for its parent company, Covenant Health, confirmed that systems there are also back online.
But the month-long outage caused significant delays for some patients, including Rick McVey, a cancer patient who missed several weeks of radiation treatment.
“I had three treatments before they had to shut down because of the problem they were having,” McVey said.
Still, McVey says he had a good experience at the cancer center, and he restarted treatment last week.
“They’ve been really good about keeping me informed, and I have no complaints,” McVey said. “I know they had to be under a lot of stress for those three weeks, trying to get everything taken care of.”
Others, like Powell, are still waiting, and he says his knee pain isn’t getting any better.
“It’s progressively gotten worse,” Powell said. “I’m probably at a chronic pain level of about four.”
Powell says he’s already contacted a different provider to get the surgery.
