Improving Clinical Trial Patient Retention with Faster Payments
Patient retention is critical to conducting efficient clinical trials and must always be top of mind. Unnecessary roadblocks that impact participation raise the risk of incomplete data, which impedes the development of essential treatments for patients who need them most.
The experiences of the sponsor, site, and patient are key to understanding the challenges of enrollment and retention. Developing this knowledge requires connecting with the experts themselves—the patients and clinicians on the ground—to better understand their challenges and address the factors hindering their progress.
Medidata regularly engages with these individuals through its Patient Insights Program and Site Insights Program, gathering information on pain points and resource gaps that can be solved through new tools or technological improvements. The feedback from these initiatives, combined with an extensive 2023 Industry Standard Research survey, reveals that reimbursement and payment challenges are a key driver that make it difficult for patients to participate in studies.
Beyond the medical hurdles of participating in a clinical trial, patients often face “financial toxicity”, the potentially devastating cost of participation that directly impacts their quality of life and can prevent them from accessing the care they need.1
Sponsors and CROs understand this isn’t in anyone’s best interest, and rely on research sites to operate as the interface between them, the patients, and their systems. Yet many sites still use manual payment workflows that are slow and prone to human error.
If payment and reimbursement processes break down, the burden of travel and fear of destitution culminate in financial toxicity. Slow payments can even put patients at risk of financial hardship, including bankruptcy. With a lack of funds, patients may skip doses or not fill vital prescriptions, extending this toxicity beyond economic considerations and potentially putting them at extreme risk or increasing mortality.
56% of patients stated that out-of-pocket costs had become so high “that they had plans to, or had already undertaken, measures including selling their home and moving in with family members, selling vehicles or household goods, or completely depleting their savings.”2
The key to addressing this situation is adopting a solution that delivers seamless, highly automated payment and reimbursement workflows, minimizing stress and delays.
What Do Sponsors Want?
The answer specifically for sponsors lies in:
- More patient-centric designs with patient choice, transparency, and no fees
- A unified platform that makes contracting and adoption easier
- Automated triggers that make the patient payment process simpler for the site
- Options for sites to pay patients while patients are on-site, (and enter patient visit data later)
Not all patient payment systems are created equal. Sponsors want a powerful resource that helps recruit patients more effectively, meet enrollment targets, boost retention, and improve patient adherence—enhancing their trust in the clinical trial process. Enter Medidata Patient Payments.
With several options on the market, Patient Payments is the only solution that accomplishes all of the above. It provides patients with a seamless and transparent payment experience—directly within their myMedidata patient portal. It’s not just a tool, but a powerful resource that gives sponsors a sense of control and efficiency when managing their trials.
“Financial considerations and patients’ compensation for time and effort participating in studies are key to recruitment and retention.”
– Meghan Harrington, VP, Clinical Trial Financial Management
Built on the industry-leading Medidata Platform, this patient-centered offering empowers trial participants with choice and flexibility in managing their payments. The system ensures fair, timely, and transparent fees, dramatically enhancing the trust between sponsor and participant. This trust is crucial for maintaining long-term relationships and encouraging repeat participation in clinical trials, aligning with industry trends toward patient engagement and value-based care.
Medidata Patient Payments arms sponsors with numerous capabilities and benefits:
- Native integrations with source data to drive payment automation: the only end-to-end patient payments solution with native connections to Rave EDC and eCOA that eliminates integration complexities and administrative burden
- End-to-end (E2E) financial management: Medidata Patient Payments is part of a broader financial picture that considers early budget planning, cost benchmarking, and fair market value (FMV), budget negotiation, site payments, and reconciliation
- Connected DCT experience: automated triggers alleviate the payment process for sites so they can focus on patients
- Flexible disbursement options: including Venmo and PayPal, with no hidden fees for patients
- Simple, secure setup through the patient’s lifetime using their myMedidata Account
- Superior app and help desk
- Patient and site-centric design: created in collaboration with Medidata’s Patient Insights and Site Tech Boards
For sponsors already leveraging Medidata’s solutions, Patient Payments provides native integrations with minimal friction. This means no juggling third-party vendors, managing multiple contracts, or reconciling data across platforms.
Sponsors are expected to deliver clinical trials with financial precision. Medidata Patient Payments provides the necessary oversight, offering real-time visibility into payments at the participant and visit level, complete audit trails, and reconciliation tools. This transparency supports compliance, budgeting, and forecasting while quickly resolving site or patient-level issues. For finance teams, this visibility means less time spent chasing down discrepancies and more confidence in reporting.
Designed with Sites and Patients in Mind
While sponsors make the purchasing decisions, clinical trial success relies heavily on how sites and patients experience the study. Medidata Patient Payments is designed to minimize site workload and maximize patient satisfaction.
On-time payments improve patient satisfaction and support retention, especially in lengthy or burdensome trials. When patients are happy and sites are less stressed, sponsors win through faster, cleaner data and more efficient trial execution.
Data integration reduces manual data entry and helps avoid site payment delays. Payments are triggered automatically by events captured in Rave EDC or eCOA, such as a completed visit or logged patient activity. This makes the process seamless, reliable, and nearly invisible to the site staff, with a level of automation that reduces the chance of payment delays, errors, or compliance issues. With this solution, sites can provide a user-friendly patient experience that eases the burden of managing stipends and reimbursement payments. This convenience brings a sense of relief and efficiency to sites, allowing them to focus more on patient care and less on administrative tasks.
Why Medidata Patient Payments?
As sponsors continue to prioritize patient centricity, trial efficiency, and diversity in participation, the need for a robust, scalable, and integrated patient payment solution is greater now than ever. The choice is clear: streamline operations, enhance compliance, and improve patient and site experience within a unified ecosystem with Medidata Patient Payments!
Learn more about the power of Medidata Patient Payments.
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