7 Questions To Ask Before Hiring A Patient Recruitment Provider.
There are few things more important in clinical trials than filling enrollment. For many sponsors, this means success hinges on engaging the right patient recruitment company—and asking potential partners about expertise, experience, and engagement methods can help you learn quickly whether they’re the right partner for you.
Ready to hire a patient recruitment company? Here are 7 questions to help you make the right decision:
1. How does your patient recruitment company ensure diversity in representation in clinical trial participants?
DEI—or diversity, equity, and inclusion—is a key component for any clinical research trial.
The more diverse your participants, the more applicable your findings will be to the broader population. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration agrees, issuing new draft guidance in the hopes that it will help enroll more participants from underrepresented minority populations into clinical trials on the grounds that “despite having a disproportionate burden for certain diseases, racial and ethnic minorities are frequently underrepresented in biomedical research.” While some demographics have to fit within a specific range (such as age or locale) your next patient recruitment company should be as proactive as possible in bringing you a diverse participant pool, so make sure you ask specific questions including:
2. Do You Have A Full-Funnel Communication Strategy To Maximize Patient Engagement And Ensure Enrollees Actually Join The Clinical Study?
It’s crucial that there’s consistent communication with participants and follow-up during the entire process.
Patient recruitment requires a full-funnel communications plan, and identifying a potential participant with a compelling ad is only the first step. Once a patient displays interest, following up with relevant health information, offering to answer any questions they may have about the trial itself, and friendly reminders to fill out any medical authorization forms or pre-screening documents increases the likelihood they will join your clinical study. Discover more about a patient recruitment company’s communication plan with questions such as:
3. How secure is your patient data collection, and what steps do you take to ensure that you’re HIPAA-compliant through the entire process?
One of the most frequent challenges we see in patient enrollment is the fear that a participant’s health data won’t be kept safe and secure. Ensuring that a patient recruitment company’s methods are in compliance with HIPAA is crucial for protecting the privacy of potential enrollees. Here are some questions you can ask to measure how responsibly your next patient recruitment partner is in gathering health data:
4. Does your approach to patient recruitment change depending on a specific therapeutic area of study?
Your patients are online no matter what. Insider Intelligence predicts that 90% of North Americans will be internet users by the end of 2024.
Patient recruitment is now therapeutic-agnostic, which means that sophisticated digital targeting strategies and compelling advertising are at a premium—as compared to expertise in a specific therapeutic area of study. Ask these targeted questions to discover if your patient recruitment company is the right fit for you:
5. What key metrics do you use in your patient enrollment?
In short, what does your patient recruitment company think success looks like? For example, if your goal is to enroll a certain number of patients in a short amount of time, you’ll want to partner with a patient recruitment company that places a stronger emphasis on average recruitment rate and efficiency. But if you have more lead time, a balanced approach with a higher initial reach, could be more helpful. In short, make sure you’re on the same page so that you’re focusing on metrics that directly affect the success of your study. Ask these questions to see if you and your potential partner are on the same page:
6.What is your patient screening process?
One of the most important aspects of patient-centric recruitment is effective communication. Is it as simple as ensuring that digital ads are engaging, and the pre-screening questionnaires are easy to understand? Or has the patient recruitment company found that phone calls and mailers increase the likelihood they’ll find quality enrollees? Here are some questions to ensure your partner isn’t spending unnecessary time and money attempting to engage patients:
7. Do you have contingency plans in place in case we don’t hit our enrollment numbers?
Even the best patient recruitment companies can encounter unforeseen challenges, no matter how experienced they are. The National Institutes of Health reported that “more than 80% of trials fail to enroll on time” leading to costly delays. You don’t need the NIH to remind you that delays are costly, but help in avoiding them in the first place is probably welcome.
That’s why learning how companies mitigate risks and navigate problems is important. How flexible are they with their processes? Are they experienced in making changes in the middle of their campaign? By asking questions that focus on their ability to overcome adversity, you can get an idea of how equipped they are to see your clinical trial enrollment through to completion:
1nHealth: Bridging the gap in patient recruitment
Our mission is to advance human health by filling up research studies faster than anyone thought possible, while being great humans to clients, to each other, and to patients around the world.
Ready to learn more about how we can help you fill your next clinical trial?
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