You’ll often be faced with more work than there is time each day. Meeting with patients, scheduling appointments, fully informing patients at time of consent, training study staff, conducting study procedures, working with sponsors, advertising for the study and recruiting patients... the list goes on and on.
With an overloaded work day can often come the feelings of being unmotivated and overwhelmed. Sites may lose sight of the recruitment goals initially outlined at the beginning of a study, if any were provided. Slowly, your study falls of their radar.
How do you stop that from happening or turn the situation around if it already has?
Follow the 8 suggestions below, all given by our Local Enrollment Specialists (previous study coordinators who have walked many days in those very shoes we talked about in the beginning) to re-engage and motivate your sites.
Form a good relationship with the site from the start- It is crucial to create a good foundation of trust and rapport during your very first encounter with the site. Understand the site’s organization, meet (preferably in person) the people who are involved in the study, learn their history, their challenges, what they have done in the past and what has and has not worked well for this type of study.
Build a recruitment tool box that is unique for each site’s needs. Provide them with educational and other helpful study materials they can use both in-office and in their surrounding community to promote the study. If they have the resources they need, they will be more successful in their recruitment efforts.
Set a recruitment goal and create a list of key performance indicators (KPIs) – Outline expectations and what needs to be done to successfully complete each KPI. If someone is coordinating with the site on their recruitment efforts, update them often on where they are with their recruitment goals.
Send the site’s study team or study coordinator weekly “highlights” - Cheer them on for completing a KPI or for prescreening, screening, or randomizing a patient. Acknowledge their efforts each time they meet one of their recruitment goals – a little goes a long way.
Maintain a positive attitude, even if faced with difficult or stringent inclusion and exclusion criteria.
Listen and genuinely show interest on what the sites are doing to recruit and enroll patients. Always find opportunities to support their activities.
Recommend some recruitment strategies and find out what the site’s think about those strategies. If they are on board and invested, enrollment numbers will increase.
Communicate effectively - secure a specific date and time to communicate with the site weekly for recruitment support. Go over any successes, challenges, or new ideas the sites may have regarding the study.
Our Local Enrollment Specialists (LES) work directly with the sites to keep your studies top-of-mind. Their ability to engage sites and boost motivation and participation across the world has been the key to success in numerous studies over the last 14 years. The LES team, on the ground in 40+ countries, works closely with every site and sponsor project team to identify enrollment challenges early, develop creative solutions to those challenges and tailor enrollment plans to sites’ exact needs. CSSi reviews protocols and enrollment criteria, identifies target patient populations, and maintains a laser-like focus on the successful completion of enrollment goals.
Once we've fully established what we can do to maximize each site's capacity to enroll patients, we build a patient enrollment plan for that site. The LES works closely with every site, keeping up a constant dialogue, analyzing results and refining activities.
They also help take tasks off of the study coordinators’ plates, including chart reviews, speaking to local physicians, setting up recruitment materials in the office, or helping virtually by contacting local community groups, sending letters, and other community outreach efforts.
No other company offers the unique services of CSSi. Yes, we are a full-service patient recruitment company. Yes, we have in-house creative design and development, media planning and placement, community outreach and medical professional networking, technology solutions and site support services. What makes us unique is our dedicated focus on enrollment planning and implementation at the site level.
Interested in getting your sites re-engaged and motivated to meet their enrollment goals?
Gene and cellular therapy are novel treatment methods that are avidly being studied in a realm of different indications including oncology, neurology, rheumatology, pediatrics, and more. As of 2023, there are over 1,500 gene/cellular therapy trials actively enrolling with a majority being in Phase 1 and Phase 2 stages.
Read More
LGBTQIA+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersexual, Asexual/Agender, + Additional Sexualities and Identities) make up a significant portion of the population: around 8% of the total United States population and an estimated 10% of the global population.1,2 Trends show an increased likelihood of identifying as LGBTQA+ in younger generations such as millennials and Gen Z.
Read More
Now that we have a flood of new adults entering the scene, they are eligible to participate in many clinical trials. These new adults aren’t their Millennial elders and are far removed from Gen X and the Baby Boomer generations, so new recruitment tactics and strategies need to be implemented to gain their interest.
Read More
During the COVID-19 pandemic, many clinical trials were halted or stopped altogether due to the inability to recruit and screen patients. Much of this was due to a centralized study set up, where patients were required to appear in person for screening and secondary study visit activities. As the pandemic progressed...
Read More
Marketing and advertising are an art form. And as is true of all art, it evolves and adapts to the world around it (And enter the famous question: Does art imitate life or does life imitate art?). Reaching patients for clinical trials is quite a task. Creating awareness, providing education, and garnering true interest is a multi-pronged approach that requires an in-depth understanding of the needs and communication...
Read More
The health and well-being of all persons regardless of race, religion, sexual orientation, or gender is integral to public health. As a nation, the United States is slowly improving and becoming self-aware of the maladaptive behavior towards its minority citizens both past and present.
Read More
Clinical trial recruitment has been understandingly difficult for the past fifteen months. Isolation and quarantine have kept patients (not to mention site and trial staff) from being able to undergo appropriate screening and enrollment measures. Because of this immense issue, many trials have been paused (or worse, stopped all together).
Read More
We have all heard these statistics before: 85% of all clinical trials fail to recruit enough patients and 80% are delayed due to patient recruitment problems.1 This makes selecting the right patient recruitment partner such an important part of setting your study up for success.
Read More
Clients often ask if we are able to provide recruitment reporting and metrics. What’s our answer? Yes, we’ve been doing it for years!
When you hire an agency to support your patient recruitment and retention efforts, you deserve to know what they are doing and if it is working.
Read More
Patient recruitment is often a time-consuming and high-cost step in completing your clinical trials. Your marketing team will have to develop the correct study message and a strong call-to-action to get people motivated to see if they prequalify. You must strategically target your patient population and generate interest in participation among this audience.
Read More
The COVID-19 virus has significantly changed the way the world operates. It has caused unprecedented interruptions to many industries and businesses around the globe, and clinical trials are no exception. New guidelines have been issued by the FDA regarding clinical trials, which could have a significant impact on study enrollment and patient retention.
Read More
As you begin the patient recruitment process for your study, it can be tempting to put all of your money towards one method. You place all bets on digital advertising because that generated the most referrals during your last study. What happens if digital doesn’t perform for you this time? It’s best to spread your advertising budget out over a number of recruitment methods. This gives you the ability to truly test what is most effective.
Read More
Identifying and implementing ways to increase diversity in clinical trials is a growing topic in the industry. Almost 40 percent of Americans belong to a racial or ethnic minority, but roughly 80-90 percent of participants in clinical trials for new drugs are still disproportionately Caucasian.1
In order to make sure drugs and treatments are safe and reliable to all people, there needs to be a better representation
Read More
You’ll often be faced with more work than there is time each day. Meeting with patients, scheduling appointments, fully informing patients at time of consent, training study staff, conducting study procedures, working with sponsors, advertising for the study and recruiting patients... the list goes on and on.
Read More
We all see others do it, and we probably experience it ourselves it every day.
Watching videos and tv shows on devices other than the TV in the family room, catching up on your favorite sitcom on-demand because you weren't home to watch it at 8pm when it originally aired, or streaming videos on YouTube to pass time. As the years go by, technology and media are changing – and so is how we are using them.
Each year, $1.89 billion is spent on patient recruitment for clinical trials.1 With a 30% average dropout rate across all clinical trials, many pharmaceutical companies are spending a large amount of money to recruit patients who aren't staying enrolled in their trials.
Needed study data for regulatory submission and the overall success of a clinical trial depend largely on study participants fulfilling their roles...
Read More
One of the top places sites look for (and sponsors depend on) when recruiting patients for clinical trials is their database of patients. It has been a go-to method of recruitment for years. In a recent study, however, only 27% of sites report being fully satisfied with their current recruitment methods, including site database searches.1
Read More
Within the world of patient recruitment for clinical trials, delayed timelines and unforeseen budget issues are often the norm. But, what if just a bit of strategic planning up-front decreased the possibility of these barriers?
Read More
As a research study is in its early planning phase, sponsors and CROs dedicate a significant amount to identifying and selecting the research sites who have the ideal database of eligible patients for their study.
Read More
As a sponsor, CRO or site, there are a surplus of patient recruitment companies you can turn to when you need help finding patients for your studies, and that number grows higher every day. Most of these companies offer a niche service, but very few are a full-service, global recruitment agency like ours.
Read More
We've all heard it before: "traditional advertising is dead." But if that were true, why are we still seeing commercials on TV, hearing ads on the radio, and seeing billboards on the highway during our morning commute?
Because it's not true! Traditional advertising is still very much alive and used by some of the largest companies worldwide.
Read More
If you’ve been following along with our past blogs, you have gained insight into:
You're going through the checklist of everything needed to get the awareness efforts for your study up and running:
You have:
There are about 93 million Americans searching online for information related to a health-related topic, with 63% of those individuals looking up a specific disease or medical problem. In fact, looking for health or medical information comes high on the list as one of the most popular activities people do when they are online.
Read More
Let's imagine two different scenarios:
A: You're sitting in a doctor's office, and you see a poster for ACN-053-2414, a clinical trial testing medication for acne in adults.
B: You're sitting in a doctor's office, and you see a poster for the Face It Acne Research Study, a clinical trial testing medication for acne in adults.
