Community Hospitals Reposition Themselves with Clinical Trials: Innovative, Progressive Care Is a Competitive Differentiator

June 1, 2013

by Sheryl S. Jackson

Sheryl S. JacksonTwenty years ago, industry-sponsored clinical trials were conducted through academic medical centers. As pharma­ceutical, device, and biotech companies pushed to get products through test­ing phases and onto the market, the value of opening trial participation to physicians at community hospitals became clear.

“Today, nearly 70 percent of pharmaceutical- and device-sponsored clinical trials are conducted at community health care settings,” says Shirley Trainor-Thomas, senior vice president of business development for GuideStar, a clinical trials management services company headquartered in Deerfield, IL. Moving clinical trials to community hospitals offers those pharmaceutical and device trial sponsors an opportunity to tap into a larger patient base because physicians are seeing patients five days each week as opposed to the two days an academic faculty member spends in a clinic. In addition, patients are more representative of those found in communities. “Also, community hospitals don’t have the bureaucratic layers of an academic facility, so decisions to of­fer a trial can be made more quickly and trials can be initiated [faster], some­times in eight weeks versus four months,” Trainor-Thomas adds.


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