Factors Affecting Patient Enrollment in Radiology Clinical Trials: A Case Study of the American College of Radiology Imaging Network
Section snippets
Study Design
The approach to this study was to execute a quality improvement project. In particular, we analyzed ACRIN's structure and processes with an eye toward understanding how these systems facilitate or impede the ability of ACRIN to accomplish its main performance goal: the efficient development, execution, and completion of important clinical trials. From such analyses, one can derive recommendations for process improvement (1, 2, 3).
General Methods
Four main techniques were used in this project: brainstorming,
Task 1: Factors Affecting Patient Identification and Enrollment
The 15 hypothesized factors affecting patient enrollment could be grouped for simplicity into four major categories: ease of identifying eligible patients, effectiveness of the enrollment process, experience and skill of study personnel, and level of motivation of study personnel.
The mean ratings given to each of these categories are presented in Table 1. The respondents generally believed that the experience and skill of study personnel was the most important factor affecting enrollment and
Discussion and Recommendations
From the data collected and observations made, it seems clear that ACRIN's performance can be improved through adjustments in its structure and processes. What follows is a discussion of what the Advisory Panel believes are the two fundamental problems in structure and process, along with a set of suggested rational interventions for each of them.
Acknowledgments
The authors thank Mary-Beth Muckian and Betty Emanuel for their assistance in manuscript preparation.
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Cited by (4)
The research associate committee of the ACR imaging network
2006, Journal of the American College of RadiologyStrategies for in-person recruitment: Lessons learned from a New Jersey Primary Care Research Network (NJPCRN) study
2010, Journal of the American Board of Family MedicineMoving toward evidence-based human participant protection
2009, Journal of Academic Ethics