Across the country, many small rural and nonprofit clinics are struggling to keep up with modern medical technology — a gap that staff said can delay diagnoses, complicate referrals and make it harder for patients to move smoothly between providers.
Olde Towne Medical & Dental Center in Williamsburg is one of them.
The clinic in Williamsburg handles roughly 15,000 visits a year from uninsured and underinsured residents, including service-industry workers, seasonal employees and families who can’t afford private care.
But much of its technology is more than a decade old. Its electronic medical records system is seven or eight versions behind the local hospital networks it depends on, leaving medical staff without the quick records access they need.
Those limitations became clearer after a ransomware attack in May temporarily shut down operations.
“We need new firewalls. We need better security altogether. We need new updated workstations so that our nurse practitioners can access electronic healthcare record systems,” said Sara Lewis, the clinic’s grants and development coordinator.
Research has found these types of technology gaps are common in smaller, grant-funded rural clinics, where limited budgets often prioritize direct care over costly infrastructure upgrades — slowing referrals, complicating care coordination and potentially contributing to higher hospital readmissions.
Community health centers, a major type of nonprofit clinic, report widespread tech challenges — with 61% facing serious interoperability issues and 65% citing cost as the biggest barrier to upgrading their electronic record systems.
Director Kendra Robinson said even when some groups try to help, like grantmakers and hospital system leaders, it can cause even more frustration.
“They want to pay for things like programs that actually touch the patient, not realizing that you need the technological base to be able to provide that high level of care and programming,” Robinson said.
Rural physicians were about 10% less likely than urban physicians to use certified electronic health record systems, a gap driven in part by outdated software and limited resources.
Moreover, nearly 39% of rural health care facilities did not have broadband services, limiting their ability to provide telehealth services to their patients.
Because the systems don’t connect, Olde Towne’s clinicians can’t securely share records with local hospitals like those in the Sentara or Riverside systems.
Providers there have to print paperwork for CT scans and X-rays – a time-consuming process that can slow care for patients who often bounce between the clinic, urgent cares and emergency rooms.
Robinson said that lack of connectivity creates daily challenges.
“If we were connected to the hospitals’ systems, referrals would be electronic,” Robinson said. “It would save time, reduce errors and make getting patients the services they need much smoother.”
Olde Towne is now trying to close its own gap.
The center launched a Giving Tuesday campaign to raise $150,000 for new servers, stronger cybersecurity protections and updated mobile units used by clinicians.
