When it comes to clinical trial recruitment, success often hinges on the strength of your partnerships—especially with your recruitment vendors. Yet, many sponsors and CROs overlook critical questions that could make or break their enrollment timelines and overall trial success.
If you’re vetting a recruitment partner—or already working with one—here are some key questions you should be asking (but might not be).
1. How Do You Build and Qualify Your Patient Database?
It’s easy for vendors to tout a large patient database. But how was that list built? Through digital advertising? Physician referrals? Bought lists?
Why it matters: A list is only as good as the qualification behind it. You want to know how recent the data is, how consent was obtained, and whether these are genuinely engaged, pre-qualified patients—or just passive leads sitting cold in a spreadsheet.
Read more about our patient database here.
2. What’s Your Plan for Diverse Enrollment?
Diversity in clinical trials isn’t just a regulatory checkbox—it’s essential for ethical, equitable, and scientifically valid research.
What to ask:
- How do you reach underrepresented populations?
- What cultural or linguistic adaptations do you make?
- Can you show historical success in meeting DEI enrollment goals?
3. Can You Show Me Site-Specific Performance Metrics?
Global performance stats are helpful—but enrollment lives and dies at the site level.
Better question: What were the results at each site in your last few campaigns? Did every site succeed—or did a few carry the rest? Did any sites underperform, and if so, why?
View case studies here.
4. How Do You Handle Pre-Screen Failures and Drop-Offs?
Recruiting patients is just the beginning. The real bottleneck often appears during pre-screening, where dropout rates spike due to misalignment between patient expectations and protocol requirements.
Ask for:
- Funnel analytics (ad click → consent → screen → randomization)
- Strategies for reducing screen failures
- How patients are educated and pre-qualified before site referral
5. What’s Your Communication Cadence With Sites?
Sites are busy. A vendor that floods inboxes or ghosts site coordinators does more harm than good.
Ask this: How do you onboard and communicate with sites? What feedback loops do you have in place to ensure recruitment isn’t happening in a vacuum?
6. How Do You Track and Report ROI?
It’s not enough to report on ad impressions or clicks. You need transparency all the way through to enrollment.
Key question: How do you define success? What’s your cost-per-randomized patient? Can you tie every marketing dollar to a recruitment outcome?
7. What Happens When Recruitment Falls Behind?
Every trial faces obstacles. The real test of a vendor is how they respond when the plan isn’t working.
Ask about:
- Contingency strategies
- Real-time optimization capabilities
- Willingness to pivot across channels, geographies, or tactics midstream
8. Who’s Actually Doing the Work?
Is your campaign managed by senior strategists or handed off to junior staff? Is your point of contact empowered to make changes quickly?
Don’t be afraid to ask: Who’s on my account team, and what experience do they have in my therapeutic area?
Final Thoughts
Your recruitment vendor should be more than a marketing service—they should be a strategic partner who understands the nuances of your protocol, your patient population, and your study goals. Asking the right questions upfront (and throughout the campaign) can save you time, money, and a lot of headaches.
Because in clinical research, it’s not just about getting leads. It’s about getting the right patients, enrolled on time, in the right places. Email our team at info@imagebloom.com or schedule a meeting via Calendly here.
