RxTrials Communiqué - A Blog About Clinical Research

Tracking the finances is a very complex task indeed. We used to use spreadsheets but finally began using Quickbooks to track this information and it works beautifully. You can pull up an aging report at any time and know what is outstanding, what is past due, etc. We just purchased a CTMS system and hope this makes the process even easier.

Ana, I totally agree- keeping track of your A/R is a hugh job for any clinical research site. For years we worked with a home grown system and while it was robust, it lacked a lot of reporting that I so wanted on a daily basis.  
 
With a commercially available system I looked for it to be able to communicate with our financial software in addition to providing reports. While I was told this integration was going to be easy, we have found it to be anything but. After months of time, energy and money I was told today that we're just about ready to go; fingers crossed. However, I have more reports then even I can look at on a daily basis. 
 
That said, I am so thrilled that companies have now seen the opportunity and need for sites to have such software and am grateful for their development.  
 
Additionally, since last years Site Solutions Summit when the sites asked the Sponsors and CROs to share report cards on how our sites were doing, having the ability to track metrics such as meeting enrollment goals, number of days first subject consented after the SIV, and so much more gives us sites the ability to manage our own metrics. 
 
As with most things in our industry – we’re a work in progress - ckp 
 
 
 

For me, the hardest thing to do is to track the screen failure payments and that problem still exists with using CTMS software. I would especially like to know how many unpaid screen failures, and their aggregate dollar amount, that there had been for some period of time. Add to this payment terms where the site is not paid until the end of the trial for screen failures (and only the ones that are payable) and it is almost impossible to determine a trial's accurate accrual amount while in the active state, because the screen fails inflate the accrual.  
 
Now that CTMS captures dates and dollar amounts of subject activity and dates and amounts of payments, the software could also easily create cash flow reports for one or multiple trials / sites / time periods. There is a lot of data captured by CTMS and I think we're only on the very edge of the exploring the analysis it has the potential of doing.

No two trials are the same in clinical research. The software companies creating solutions to help manage trials are fully aware of this and are often making changes and adding functions as the need surfaces. We especially see this with the way study finances are calculated. For the most part, clinical trials can be entered into a CTMS and the finances are computed automatically. You may run across some trials that are completely different and have no idea how to address this with your CTMS. The best advice I can provide is to contact your CTMS support team and seek their guidance. Using their previous experience, creative methods and workarounds, they may be able to assist you with the setup that drives your financial tracking. If you have a trial that is very particular and stumps the support team, you will often find that they address this and adjust the system to be more flexible in the future.

Regarding screen failures, there are some CTMS tools with the ability to track contract terms and automate screen fail payments for you. There are also reports to explain what the unrestricted accruals are versus the restricted accruals. This may help you track those screen fail values you are in need of. Please contact your CTMS support team if you need any assistance in setting this up.