Caswell County, where William Crumpton works, runs along the northern edge of North Carolina and is a rural landscape of mostly former tobacco farms and the occasional fast-food restaurant.
“There are wide areas where cellphone signals are just nonexistent,” Crumpton says. “Things like satellite radio are even a challenge.”
Crumpton, who grew up in this area, is CEO of Compassion Health, a federally funded community health center. The county has no hospital or emergency room. And for much of the pandemic, about half of the center’s patients could only be reached the old fashioned way: a basic voice call on a phone landline.
Read this story for free
To continue reading, sign up for our newsletters and get unlimited access to WABE.org
We won't share your information with outside organizations Why am I seeing this?
