The clinical research industry currently struggles with misplaced patient recruitment investments and misaligned accountability. Study sponsors devote sizable budgets towards centralized patient marketing campaigns, while providing minimal funding for sites themselves to conduct outreach. Despite sites bearing ultimate responsibility for attracting, screening, and enrolling patients, they have little input or control over recruitment spending.
This disconnect between recruitment budget allocation and enrollment obligations creates significant friction and systemic inefficiency.
Moving recruitment investments directly to sites and aligning payment to performance are requisite to unlock expertise and optimization.
Sites receive free leads from central recruitment campaigns, reducing motivation to invest in and improve their own recruitment. Managing the process is operationally costly for sites, so sites view the recruitment function as a cost-center.
Some research sites have limited customer acquisition capabilities, limited resources and ineffective processes to convert leads. Generally sites don’t invest in “patient marketing & recruitment” operations or technology, so when provided advertising funds or central campaign leads, their effectiveness is questionable.
Central campaigns use tactics that blind the site brand to the patient and this approach misses the opportunity to establish the vital local site-patient relationship needed for recruitment, enrollment and retention.
