GARDNER, Mass. —

A network outage at both Heywood and Athol hospitals is impacting several service systems, including phone service.

Although both hospitals continue to give patient care, ambulances are being temporarily diverted.

Both hospitals remain open for walk-ins.

NewsCenter 5 has reached out to Heywood and Athol Hospital for more information, but have not heard back.

There is no word yet on what caused the outage or when it could be fixed.

On Sunday morning, Heywood Hospital wrote in a Facebook post that it experienced a network issue that temporarily placed them on a Code Black diversion.

Code Black is defined as when a hospital’s emergency department is closed to all patients (ambulance and walk-in patients) due to an internal, non-medical emergency, according to the Execu

See Full Page