Clinical trial patient recruitment is often challenging, but, in our experience, it doesn’t have to be.
The data shows that ~80 percent of clinical trials are “delayed due to recruitment problems and dropout rates are high.” The overwhelming majority of trials (90 percent) have to double their original timeline to meet enrollment goals. More than one-third (37 percent) of sites under-enroll volunteers and 11 percent fail to enroll a single patient.
Leading research studies stand in contrast to these sobering averages. They respect their patients’ time, intelligence, and autonomy while making participation as straightforward as possible. They know intimately that behind every enrollment is a real person making a significant decision about their health and their life.
The Seven Best Practices
There are seven best practices for clinical trial patient recruitment used by leading research studies. Near the top of the list is build relationships before you need them. As we wrote in our new patient recruitment guide,
Leading clinical research teams invest in long-term partnerships with referring physicians, patient advocacy groups, and community organizations. They share educational content, attend medical meetings, and become trusted resources in their therapeutic area.”
They are not strangers asking for favors, but instead are partners working toward shared goals.
Building this level of patient trust aligns well with academic medical centers and their mission-driven focus and community connections. It can also extend beyond the organization to principal investigators who attend patient support groups and nurture relationships with community health centers. These investigators are then able to share insights that inform recruitment strategies.
This patient recruitment best practice, like most of the ones in our new guide, does not necessitate a big budget or revolutionary technology. As we wrote in our clinical trial patient recruitment guide, “[these best practices] require treating patient recruitment with the same rigor and respect you’d apply to any other critical aspect of your trial.”
To read all seven best practices, download OpenClinica’s practical guide to patient recruitment excellence here.