If you’re like most pharmaceutical companies and CROs looking to complete a trial, you are accustomed to reading about traditional patient recruitment companies. Call center operations. Centralized patient recruitment. Cost per call figures. Expensive project management.

The approach we take at CSS is vastly different. As a Site Performance Company, our services are structured to manage the trial enrollment process and support the sites to maximize performance--- meeting or exceeding timelines within budget. Our metrics have shown that setting up a trial for success by investing in enrollment tactics at the site level minimizes costs and maximizes results. By increasing the number of performing sites, study budgets are used more efficiently and enrollment is completed earlier. Sites are interested, engaged--- and most of all--- motivated to enroll for your study.
Our Trial Enhancement Services provide solutions to your enrollment challenges by focusing on three core areas:  Trial Enhancement Tools, Site Performance and Enrollment Management and Retention and Compliance Services.

Trial Enhancement Tools

Too many trials are destined to fail by not providing the necessary tools for the sites to be successful with  enrollment. CSS recognizes the importance of taking the important initial steps to ensure enrollment is as strong as possible by providing three key services and tools.

• Coordinator Study Enhancement Kits:  Create an in-office buzz. A welcome kit kicks off the recruitment campaign by providing the site study coordinator with useful, study-branded items, customized to reflect the study theme and keep the coordinator excited about your trial.
• Coordinator Teleconferences:  CSS will host a series of study coordinator teleconferences focused on patient recruitment, customized to the specific challenges surrounding the trial and solutions.
• Study Enhancement Kits:    Keep your trial visible. Through brochures, posters, targeted letters, press releases and other customized materials, this kit serves to enhance the visibility of your clinical trial. Packaged in a convenient binder and box, this kit provides a central location for the PI to access everything needed for the study.

Site Performance and Enrollment Management 

Communication with the sites increases enrollment rates. The CSS Site Performance and Enrollment team will conduct weekly phone meetings with study sites to review current activities and goals and provide assistance as needed to overcome any recruitment challenges. The weekly site contact will also provide study updates, obtain patient tracking updates, and serve as a reminder to the site to ensure that the study stays “top-of-mind.”

Another goal of the CSS Site Performance and Enrollment team is to convert initial interest into enrollment. Throughout the enrollment campaign, CSS will assist the sites with the following referral services to ensure that patients retain interest in the study:

• Referral patient contact, such as appointment reminder calls, difficult-to-reach patient calls and letters, no-show patient calls, or any special calls or letters deemed necessary
• Appointment scheduling and rescheduling
• Referral patient tracking from initial call through each stage of screening to randomization

This referral support increases the percentage of potential study subjects being evaluated by the sites.

Retention and Compliance Services 

Given both the investment required to recruit subjects and the enrollment timelines most studies face, CSS can develop a retention strategy that addresses both the needs of the subject and those of the site personnel.  Clearly, it is important to maintain motivation to complete the study in order to fully capitalize on the investment in recruitment strategies. Through thoughtful items and services, CSS will create a retention program that both supports participant protocol adherence and boosts participants’ personal dedication to the study, thus increasing the number of participants that finish the trial. CSS will customize the retention program to fit the challenges of each study protocol. We will first analyze the various issues affecting participation; and, based on this information we will formulate a retention strategy that creates a sense of community for the study and makes participants feel both supported and appreciated.