Does Paying Subjects to Participate in Research Improve Recruitment

Does Paying Subjects to Participate in Research Improve Recruitment and Increase the Proportion of Socially Deprived and Elderly Participants?

Patient recruitment into clinical trials is a major challenge and the elderly, socially deprived and those with multiple co-morbidities are often under-represented. The idea of paying patients an incentive to participate in research is controversial and evidence is needed to evaluate this as a recruitment strategy. This study aims to assess the impact on recruitment into five current clinical trials of a £100 incentive payment and whether this payment will attract more elderly and socially deprived patients.

Study Overview

• Status: Completed
• Conditions: Cardiovascular Diseases
• Intervention / Treatment: Behavioral: Financial Payment of £100

Detailed Description

In the UK, it is already common practice to reimburse out-of-pocket expenses eg travelling expenses and parking charges to patients participating in clinical research studies, but not to give any other incentives. This contrasts with healthy volunteer studies where financial payments are often made to encourage participation in studies.

There are few data on how payments to patients in the UK would influence the recruitment and demographic structure of patients recruited to clinical research studies.

The single biggest cost of clinical trials in the UK is the cost of recruiting suitable subjects. The Academy of Medical Sciences report on the UK clinical trials environment, "A new pathway for the regulation and governance of health research", provided a comprehensive review of the barriers faced in running clinical trials . However, other barriers to recruitment exist after these hurdles have been overcome. Importantly, in our experience, of 100 suitable subjects identified as suitable to be entered into a study only about 14% are actually randomised. Most of the identified suitable subjects do not reply to invitation letters from their doctor and some patients who do reply decline the invitation to participate. Campaigns to engage the public on the importance of research have had modest effects on improving the awareness about trials but no measurable effect on willingness to participate .

An important finding is that those subjects who do participate in clinical trials usually have much lower rates of events than predicted from observational data. This is probably because trials attract subjects who care about their own health and the health of others and these subjects exhibit good 'health behaviour'. Those subjects with less good health behaviour and who constitute the subjects who suffer more consequences from their disorders in the real world, do not participate in trials as readily. The result is that trial participants tend to be middle class, middle aged, low risk subjects. These subjects are unrepresentative of the population at large or the population who will eventually get most of the prescribing (lower class, elderly and high risk). In addition, including only low risk subjects may result in studies being abandoned because the low event rates make achieving a statistically reliable result futile.

How can we address this issue within an ethical framework?

The findings from one trial currently running casts some light on this issue. The Streamlined Celecoxib versus standard therapy Outcome Trial (SCOT) is currently running in both the UK and Denmark. Trial recruitment in Denmark is significantly better than in the Scotland. We think that this is because in Denmark, all patients pay the full price for their medications and trial participation means that they get their medication free. In Scotland where recruitment is lower, all prescriptions are free anyway so there is no such incentive. Thus there appears to be a financial incentive for Danish patients to participate.

The present proposal seeks to study the effect of payments on recruitment.

• Study Type: Interventional
• Enrollment (Actual): 1015
• Phase: Not Applicable

Participation Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: 18 years and older (Adult, Older Adult)
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: No
• Genders Eligible for Study: All

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

• Eligible for inclusion in one of the 5 clinical trials involved in the paying patients trial.

Exclusion Criteria:

-

Study Plan

How is the study designed?

Design Details

• Primary Purpose: Health Services Research
• Allocation: Randomized
• Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
• Masking: None (Open Label)

Number of Arms

2

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm	Intervention / Treatment
Experimental: Financial incentive offered; Patient offered £100 incentive payment in initial trial invitation letter.	Behavioral: Financial Payment of £100; No financial payment; Other Names: No Financial Payment
Experimental: No incentive. Payment not offered; Patient sent standard trial invitation letter with no offer of incentive payment.	Behavioral: Financial Payment of £100; No financial payment; Other Names: No Financial Payment

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Patient response to initial invitation letter	Number of positive responses to the initial invitation to participate in a clinical trial letter as determined by whether or not the patient was offered £100 incentive payment.	On Study completion Approx 1 year

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Recruitement of elderly and socially deprived patients	To determine whether the offer of £100 incentive would result in increased recruitment of elderly or socially deprived patients. Social deprivation determined by postcode and Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD) score.	Through study completion Approx 1 year

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: University of Dundee

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start: June 1, 2012
• Primary Completion (Actual): August 1, 2012
• Study Completion (Actual): February 1, 2013

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: January 7, 2016
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: March 15, 2019
• First Posted (Actual): March 20, 2019

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (Actual): March 21, 2019
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: March 19, 2019
• Last Verified: March 1, 2019

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Keywords: Trial Recruitment; Incentive Payment; Patient Demographics
• Additional Relevant MeSH Terms: Cardiovascular Diseases
• Other Study ID Numbers: 2012 CV01

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

• Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?: NO