The Importance of Site Payments in Clinical Trials
The ability for study sponsors to make investigator site payments accurately, on time and with the appropriate level of details have long been an industry pain point for clinical trials. Sixty-six percent of investigator sites report having less than three months’ operating cash on hand with lengthy delays in site payments resulting in high turnover rates among clinical investigators. Luckily, out of this industry pain point innovations for both systems and services have been developed in the last few years to address this topic. Unfortunately, with various choices the classic ‘paralysis by analysis’ creeps in when study sponsors get ready to explore utilizing investigator site payment systems. Furthermore, even when a study sponsor moves forward and selects a site payment vendor, the relationship can at times be challenging because the right questions were not asked (and answered) during the vendor selection process. While the investigator site payment vendor implementation stage is also important, many of the hurdles encountered at that stage could have been avoided with a thorough selection process.
In order to help those on the study sponsor side of clinical trials going through a selection process for these vendors, we at ClinBiz® have put together a checklist of questions to ask and things to consider when selecting site payment vendors. For the purpose of this checklist, the words clinical study and clinical trial will be used interchangeably. Feel free to save and share this checklist with your teams to use during the site payment vendor selection process.
(1) Society for Clinical Research Sites (SCRS), Site Payment (White Paper), October 2016