The Hidden Cost Of Waiting: 5 Stats On What Gets Lost By Delaying Mobile Refresh

Your caregivers need to talk to you. They need to talk to clients. They need to talk to each other. They need to talk while on the move, between care locations, away from home, nowhere near an office.

What happens when they can’t?

“There are hidden, long-term costs to keeping legacy mobile devices in service too long,” says Dipesh Hinduja, Mobility, Cloud, and Security Leader at mobile-technology provider Stratix. In fact, there are five.

1. Saving money today just to overpay tomorrow

Key stat: 32% of home-based care providers are short-changing themselves by skimping on cost

According to new research from Stratix — a study titled “Home Healthcare Leaders Speak” — agencies annually spend an average of $288 per caregiver on mobile technology, with 68% of leaders prioritizing performance and durability over price — a clear signal that cheap devices don’t stay cheap for long.

Indeed, when refreshes are reactive, organizations face:

• Higher replacement frequency
• Unplanned purchases
• Excess data usage
• Little opportunity to recover residual value from aging devices

In short, these hidden costs quietly exceed the savings leaders thought they were preserving.

2. Clinician dissatisfaction and turnover grows more desperate

Key stat: With caregiver turnover around 46%, providers need to work harder to keep the staff they have

When providers delay their mobile refreshes, their clinicians are the ones who first experience the consequences — sharply.

Stratix’s research reveals that workforce retention continues to rank as one of the top two challenges facing home health agencies, with average caregiver turnover hovering around 46% annually. Leaders acknowledge that slow, unreliable or inconsistent devices add friction to already demanding roles.

As one executive summarized during the “Leaders Speak” sessions, “When technology gets in the way of care, people disengage.” Aging devices turn everyday tasks like documentation, scheduling and EVV into sources of frustration, accelerating burnout and pushing clinicians toward organizations with better tools.

3. Compliance risks rise, as do security needs

Key stat: 92% of home-based care orgs plan to boost security

Waiting too long to refresh devices increases more than operational friction — it weakens security posture. Stratix research shows 92% of home health organizations plan to improve security protections, reflecting broad concern about safeguarding patient data in increasingly mobile care environments.

“There are three main reasons planning ahead is so important,” Hinduja says. “First is end-user experience. Older devices may have degraded batteries, slower performance or lack the capability to run the latest apps. Second is IT support and innovation. Third is program scalability and focus.”

Older devices often lack modern authentication, up-to-date operating systems and support for newer security standards. Leaders in “Home Healthcare Leaders Speak” repeatedly cited fragmented device fleets as a major obstacle, noting that 77% identified integration and compatibility issues as barriers to scaling technology.

In a field dominated by remote work and BYOD realities, unmanaged and outdated devices quietly expand compliance risk.

4. Missed opportunity to leverage AI-enabled workflows

Key stat: 79% of providers are using AI

AI adoption in home health is no longer theoretical. A whopping 79% of leaders report using AI today, primarily to improve productivity and clinician workflows.

Yet many agencies are unable to scale these tools effectively because older devices can’t support consistent, on-device intelligence. As discussed in the executive briefings, AI only delivers value when it works seamlessly at the point of care.

Without modern processing power, reliable performance, and secure device foundations, AI initiatives stall in pilots or create uneven user experiences that teams abandon.

The result? A widening gap between AI investment and realized impact.

5. Lost Productivity and Stalled Innovation

Key stat: 75% of home health IT teams report managing devices is moderately to very challenging

Reactive, do-it-yourself refresh cycles drain productivity and slow innovation. Leaders interviewed for “Leaders Speak” described IT teams stretched thin supporting a wide range of device models and OS versions, forcing organizations into perpetual “fire-drill mode.”

“When organizations plan refreshes on a three-to-four-year cycle, they can spend a short period deploying devices and most of the cycle innovating — improving software, workflows and patient outcomes,” Hinduja says. “Without planning, leaders are constantly distracted by urgent device issues.”

Instead of spending time improving workflows or patient outcomes, teams remain focused on break-fix issues and emergency replacements. As one participant notes, “When refresh is constant, innovation never really starts.” Planned refresh cycles allow agencies to deploy efficiently, then spend the majority of the lifecycle improving care delivery rather than managing device chaos.

This Views article is sponsored by Stratix. To read their full research report, visit Home Healthcare Leaders Speak.

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