Solving Payment Challenges at the Site-Level

In a recent video interview with Applied Clinical Trials, Jimmy Bechtel, vice president, site engagement, SCRS, discussed key challenges and initiatives at the site-level. AI's impact on sites is significant, with uncertainty around its implementation. Diversity requirements pose challenges, and technology overload is a major issue due to inconsistent tech stacks and financial burdens on sites. Bechtel also highlighted some initiatives that SCRS is currently working on and gave an overview of the most recent Global Site Solutions Summit.

A transcript of Bechtel’s conversation with ACT can be found below.

ACT: What are some initiatives or projects SCRS is currently working on and what excites you most about them?

Bechtel: Yeah, there's a there's always a number of different things that we've got coming out, working on, trying to listen to the site community, and build things and work on things that are going to benefit them as much as possible. There's really four things I want to highlight. We just launched our formalized mentorship program, an actual matching of a mentor and mentee. We've done this informally through a variety of different ways; senior leaders, thought leadership, providing information, putting it out to the SCRS community for those that are less experienced in various areas can absorb through tools, through webinars, the online community that we have, where the members are able to communicate with each other. Again, relatively informal, but now we're formalizing that and doing some matching. We're really excited to be able to bring the next generation of research sites into the fold, because there's such a strong need for good sites now, so having someone in your corner that you can talk to and have some candid conversations with and not be afraid to ask the questions or be seen as ignorant or uneducated in a specific area is going to really go a long way for the site community as a whole I think.

We've been working pretty avidly recently on our payment initiative. We know that payments, as I mentioned earlier, finances and site payments, continue to be a major challenge at the site-level. This payment initiative is tackling that in three different ways. We're looking at payment frequency; 75% of sites roughly, our data shows that we have as part of our community want monthly payments, yet only about 40% of sites actually get monthly payments in the end, so a major discrepancy there. We're working to break down the barriers there and find out why that's happening and how we can continue to move the needle in the right direction. I'll tell you that 40% is a lot larger than it was several years ago, which is great to see progression there, but again, still a big gap in that 75 to 40% and then finally, the issue that that group is tackling is related to the taxation of patient stipends and/or reimbursement. In the United States, any amount over $600 is typically subject to IRS reporting and is considered income, so that's taxable, and that can be a major deterrent for a lot of participants or patients in clinical trials, and their ability to do that for reasons I won't get into today, but we're working on continuing to move the needle forward there. We did make progress. Last year, they did pass an act that enabled those with life-threatening conditions and severe illness as well as certain oncology trials to be exempt from that rule, but really for it to be effective, it needs to apply across the board to all clinical trials.