Reimbursement Matters: Overcoming Barriers to Clinical Trial Accrual

Background: Accrual to cancer clinical trials is suboptimal. Few data exist regarding whether financial reimbursement might increase accruals.

Objective: The objective of this study was to assess perceptions about reimbursement to overcome barriers to trial accrual.

Research Design: This was a cross-sectional survey.

Subjects: Oncologists identified from the American Medical Association Physician Masterfile.

Measures: We report descriptive statistics, associations of physician characteristics with perceptions of reimbursement, domains, and subthemes of free-text comments.

Results: Respondents (n=1030) were mostly medical oncologists (59.4%), ages 35-54 (67%), and male (75%). Overall, 30% reported discussing trials with >25% of patients. Barriers perceived were administrative/regulatory, physician/staff time, and eligibility criteria. National Cancer Institute cooperative group participants and practice owners were more likely to endorse higher reimbursement. Respondents indicated targeted reimbursement would help improve infrastructure, but also noted potential ethical problems with reimbursement for discussion (40.7%) and accrual (85.9%). Free-text comments addressed reimbursement sources, recipients, and concerns about the real and apparent conflict of interest.

Conclusions: Though concerns about a potential conflict of interest remain paramount and must be addressed in any new system of reimbursement, oncologists believe reimbursement to enhance infrastructure could help overcome barriers to trial accrual.