Clinical Study Sites Struggle To Manage Responses To Ad Campaigns

By Molly Hair, Account Manager, WCG ThreeWire

Sponsors, through large media vendors, blanket a region or country with advertisements via radio, TV, newspaper, social media, etc., casting a wide net for potential participants. When the study involves a common condition, such as osteoarthritis (OA), people respond in droves. Sites that can barely manage 10 calls a day receive more than 100. Coordinators want to throw up their hands in frustration. It’s not a failure on the site’s part: They simply lack the staffing capacity to act on all those referrals.

To their credit, most sites keep plowing through. And they grow more frustrated. Most individuals they’re interviewing at this point won’t qualify for a first office visit (FOV). Imagine screening 100 eager patients and finding only five who qualify. Ultimately, the sites fall behind--and some give up altogether, missing out on potential study patients. Sites become even more fatigued, not only by the volume of calls but by the fact so few qualify.

As the pressure mounts prescreening may become sloppy. So now, not only do they miss potential subjects, but they are calling in people for the FOV who never should have made it to that point.