Clinical research sites and site networks are the most critical players in patient recruitment, yet under the centralized “free leads” model currently used by most sponsors, sites are left out of the marketing process until they are provided with leads generated by the centralized recruitment vendor. There are several well-known drawbacks to this approach, including poor outcomes. In general, these campaigns fail because they are ineffective at delivering the patients each individual site needs.

Clinical researchers and sites have also learned that these “free leads” come with the high operational and labor costs associated with contacting many low-quality leads to enroll a relatively small number of patients. The process is inherently inefficient and ineffective, and it puts an incredible amount of burden on sites.

C6 offers a better way forward that reduces risks and improves the results for research sites as well as sponsors. Our approach is based on an innovative, shared risk pricing model that focuses on partnership, transparency, common objectives, and KPIs.

Here are four of the ways C6 helps sites and sponsors improve their patient recruitment.

Reducing Financial Risk to Deliver Candidates

One of the misconceptions about the “Free Leads” model is that sponsors take on the risk of recruiting patients because they pay for marketing and advertising. While sponsors write the checks, anyone with experience in the industry knows that sites actually hold all the risks for enrolling qualified patients. If they don’t enroll enough patients, studies are canceled, and sites become unsustainable. This makes sites responsible for a process in which they frequently have little or no influence.

C6 reduces sites’ recruitment risk and the associated stress on several fronts. First, we remove uncertainty from what has traditionally been an opaque process by coming to a fair and common-sense agreement with our clients based on our unique business model. Clients only pay for the referrals that are delivered. There are no upfront costs, setup fees, or advanced payments required.

We are careful to reach a mutually agreed-upon definition of a referral beforehand, and we also scope details for a pilot campaign that includes a budget and a maximum volume of referrals available at this phase.  The client agrees to purchase the maximum volume of referrals provided by C6, based on a set cost for each referral. The cost per referral is a mutually agreed upon price based on the indication, target referral volume, type of referral, geography, and local media market demand.

After the pilot phase, there are no further financial commitments required of our customers. We negotiate a monthly target referral volume based on the customer’s budget and get started. As the campaign unfolds, we monitor analytics and look for opportunities to adjust or improve the results.

With our approach, clients have the visibility to accurately budget for recruitment and take an active role in managing and optimizing their campaigns.

Helping Sites Build Capabilities on a Budget

One of the reasons for the persistence of the centralized sponsor-funded approach to recruitment is that research sites often lack the customer (patient) acquisition and lead management domain expertise needed to effectively manage campaigns, and that expertise is expensive and challenging to develop.

C6 provides an opportunity to develop these niche capabilities by helping clients re-frame recruitment as an opportunity. Supported by our deep domain expertise and purpose-built technology platform, recruiters can be much more productive and optimize the entire inbound patient recruitment process. This effectively increases the site’s recruiting capabilities without incurring the long-term, fixed costs that are associated with hiring and training more staff.

By empowering recruiters with a more efficient and transparent process, sites can reap several benefits. For starters, they can focus on managing their patient acquisition cost (PAC), which is the single most important financial metric for research sites. By establishing and managing efforts toward a budgeted PAC, sites can make more informed choices about marketing partners and how to best allocate their budget and resources. They can finally treat PAC as a KPI instead of an afterthought.

Once the campaign is up and running and patients are being enrolled, sites also have the data they need to negotiate for reimbursement for their fully loaded PAC from sponsors. As sponsors can see all of the campaign’s analytics and the number of enrollments being generated, they can be confident about how funds are being spent. This visibility into the sponsor’s return on their investment (ROI) is an invaluable benefit to the relationship with their sites.

Providing Comprehensive Services, Flexible Design, and Real-time Campaign Adjustments

C6 is a full-service recruitment management company with capabilities including digital marketing and advertising technology, lead management, and account management. We work with each client to determine the subset of our services that best matches their needs and then execute digital marketing campaigns based on the agreed-upon scope of work.

One of our most important differentiators is that we establish benchmarks and analyze real-time data to make timely adjustments that maximize referrals. Rather than taking the traditional approach of buying all media up front, we look for opportunities to pivot, iterate, and adapt campaigns based on the recent behaviors of prospective recruits.

Making Getting Started Quick and Painless

Our model for recruiting-as-a-service is innovative and represents a completely different approach to recruitment. As such, we think it’s important to make it easy for new customers to “test drive” C6 with little risk.  We do not require setup charges, guaranteed payments, or long-term fixed costs to get started. We take the risk of assessing our clients’ needs and launching their recruitment campaigns because we are confident in the value of our services.

Improve Recruitment Success with C6

For too long, research sites have carried the bulk of the risk and burden for clinical trial recruitment despite having little control over the process. C6’s shared risk model empowers sites to take control of their recruiting, drive higher enrollment rates, and make the case for full reimbursement of their PAC for the studies they support — all within a financially sustainable model.

If you would like to know more about our services or platform, contact us to schedule a meeting.