Increasing clinical trial enrollment with the use of incentives in a community oncology practice.

Abstract

205 Background: Clinical trials represent a critical component of progress in cancer care, however, enrollment of patients onto adult cancer clinical trials remains disturbingly low at 3-5 percent of patients. In an effort to increase enrollment onto open trials at our center as well as to meet our ACOS requirements, our community cancer center instituted an incentive program to compensate the time medical oncology providers spend enrolling patients onto trials. Methods: In October of 2013 (the beginning of fiscal year 2014), an incentive was given to medical oncologists in our practice if they met an enrollment target of 1% of patients onto trials open at our center. Comparison of enrollment was performed between fiscal year 2014, when the incentive existed, and corresponding months of fiscal year 2013. Results: Enrollment at our center from October 2012-May 2013 was 9 patients with an average of 1.125 per month. For the corresponding period of October 2013-May 2014, when the incentive existed, enrollment was 48 patients, with an average of 6 patients per month. This far exceeded the 1% threshold required to achieve the incentive and has not abated despite the completion of the metric. In addition, enrollment has been similar to unfunded investigator initiated trials and pharmaceutical trials. Cooperative group trials remain limited by lack of funding. All physicians in the group have qualified for the incentive. Conclusions: Incentive programs designed to compensate the time involved with enrolling patients onto clinical trials was very effective in this busy community oncology practice.