Carolina Carrasco, senior director at IQVIA, explores how fragmented financial workflows can create administrative burden and uncertainty for trial sites.
Enrollment and retention rates, protocol adherence, on-time and on-budget study completion – these are the metrics that typically define site success in clinical trials. But from a site’s perspective, success hinges on something more fundamental: financial certainty.
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For sites, knowing that payments are reliably coming in and being able to identify where money issues may exist is essential. Reliable finances help keep staff satisfied, support patient retention and allow investigators to focus on the study. Even for large sites with dedicated administrative teams, financial certainty can drive efficiency, stability, participant satisfaction and increased study participation.
Financial certainty shouldn’t be secured mid-study. It should be built into a study’s foundation in the form of an integrated technology ecosystem that connects data and digitalises workflows to make financial activities more efficient, transparent and predictable.
Fixing the source of uncertainty
At many sites, financial management is still handled manually and with multiple systems that don’t all talk to each other. Budgets are tracked in one platform. Contracts are managed in another. Payments are calculated elsewhere. And invoices are sent by email or a portal using yet another platform.
This fragmented approach can be time-consuming and cumbersome for site staff. It also introduces friction and creates data silos that limit visibility for site personnel and others across the study’s lifecycle.
Manually re-entering data from one platform to another takes up time and resources while creating potential for errors. Misaligned timing – such as when a site enters visit data versus when that data is processed for payment – can also delay payments. Meanwhile, both sites and participants can be left in the dark, wondering about the status of their payments because they don’t have a real-time view of that data.
An integrated financial ecosystem eases or eliminates these challenges by connecting the different technologies used across the duration of a clinical trial. Now, data doesn’t start and stop in siloed systems; it moves with the study. Additionally, automating workflows in this integrated ecosystem creates even more opportunities to reduce the potential for errors and to improve efficiency, transparency and trust.
Budget data can flow into payment workflows without requiring someone to re-key the data. The receipt of invoices can automatically trigger site payments, and participant activities like the completion of a survey can trigger micro-payments. Every stakeholder can have a real-time view of the financial data relevant to them.
With this foundation in place, greater financial certainty can be gained at every stage of a clinical trial to power site success.
Simplified contracting
Contract-related activities can get lost in the shuffle when investigators or coordinators at sites have a lot of priorities to manage. But finalising and signing a contract is essential to getting a study moving forward.
An integrated financial ecosystem leveraging multiple data sources can simplify contract execution for sites by minimising back-and-forth.
A sponsor or contract research organisation, for instance, can use both global benchmarking cost data and past payment and performance data to create fair-market pricing. This can be used to write more agreeable contracts for sites and reduce the need for negotiation.
Once a contract is signed, there’s no need to re-enter final budget data in another system. Additionally, invoices and payments, including the startup fee, can be applied against it immediately. This continuity reduces administrative burden, minimises delays and ensures sites have faster access to funds, which reinforces the financial certainty needed to operate efficiently, keep staff focused on the study and its patients, and ultimately, set the stage for overall site success.
Predictable site payments
Timely and accurate site payments can improve site satisfaction and sites’ relationships with sponsors, which fosters trust and drives repeated collaboration. They’re also essential for sites to remain operationally viable.
Today, financial management technologies that are both integrated and flexible make on-time and accurate payments possible even for large, global clinical trials. Whether sites submit invoices through a portal or via email, a flexible site-payment platform can respond appropriately and trigger payment processing automatically.
Because the technologies are integrated and share a common data stream, site personnel can jump into them at any point to track invoices, review payments and resolve potential issues. Likewise, participants can review whether compensation for time and reimbursement of expenses have been processed and check the status of their payments.
Additionally, when these integrated technologies are built for global use – such as with a multi-lingual design and according to multiple countries’ rules and processes – the benefits of automated workflows and real-time visibility can be extended to anywhere in the world where patient populations need to be reached.
Transparent and efficient participant payments
Participant compensation and expense reimbursements impact retention and compliance, but can also come with challenges.
For starters, processing these payments and responding to participant inquiries can be time-consuming for site staff, particularly when resources are limited. Manual processes increase the likelihood of errors, and participants can lose interest in a study if they receive late or incorrect compensation or reimbursements.
Folding payments into an integrated technology ecosystem can address these challenges.
Perhaps most significantly, payment processing can be automated. Participant payment technology can pull visit data from an electronic data capture system or elsewhere, automatically calculate stipends, and distribute the stipend at the point of payout while notifying participants. This enables faster, accurate compensation and reimbursements.
Participants also no longer need to contact site staff to inquire about payments. Instead, they can simply tap open a mobile app with real-time visibility of financial data to see what they’ve been paid, what’s pending and why.
Creating a foundation for success
A connected and unified financial ecosystem does more than enable accurate and on-time payments. It sustains sites, strengthens partnerships and retention, and keeps studies on schedule. Most importantly, it allows site personnel to worry less about finances so they can stay focused on their purpose – supporting and caring for their patients and advancing the development of new drugs.
