3 Clinical Trial Billing Challenges Research Sites Solve with StudyTeam

• Challenge 1: Complicated coverage analysis
• Challenge 2: Tedious budgeting
• Challenge 3: Time-consuming tracking of sponsor invoices and payments

55% of sites faced decreased profits in 2023 compared to the previous year, while almost 80% of sites reported less than six months of capital in the bank, according to a Society for Clinical Research Sites (SCRS) survey. Sites are faced with ample administrative challenges that lead to big losses in revenue such as:

• identifying and managing patients across multiple trials and scheduling them in the correct visit windows
• updating sponsors on pre-screening and enrollment progress
• accurately capturing and storing source documentation

The result: Clinical trial site burden is often high. On top of that, budget management and sponsor invoicing adds a whole extra set of complexities, which carry huge costs.

So what’s leading to these financial concerns, and how can you address them? Take a look at three top clinical trial billing challenges sites are working with, and see how StudyTeam’s Site Financials suite helps sites like yours simplify those processes.

Challenge 1: Complicated coverage analysis

When juggling multiple trials and waves of patients with different health conditions, it can be tricky and time-consuming to determine which costs are billable to insurance and which are covered by the sponsor. This can lead to sites not invoicing for certain activities and, ultimately, losing revenue. 

When site teams log in to Site Financials, StudyTeam’s clinical trial billing software, they don’t even have to think about billable costs – the billability of each visit activity is already baked into their pre-screening and screening checklists, with associated costs attached.

For instance, when a patient enrolled in a trial arrives for a dose visit, you can log into StudyTeam to mark the completion of activities related to that visit. StudyTeam streamlines this process by automatically adding the associated billing costs once the activities are checked off. It’s like having a personal accountant integrated with your site staff.

OneStudyTeam experts assist in setting up this system for your entire team. Now, everyone at your site can log into StudyTeam, record activity completions for each patient visit, and automatically track the associated costs for invoicing.

Challenge 2: Tedious budgeting

Sites are tasked with developing detailed budgets that account for all trial-related expenses, including patient visits, holdbacks before certain trial milestones are hit, and overhead costs. Not only is this time-consuming, but it requires accurate calculations. 

To reduce budgeting time and ensure accurate expense tracking, StudyTeam’s Site Financials suite factors holdbacks and overhead percentages into each budget. When you first start to build out a budget in StudyTeam, you can add the known percentages for holdbacks and overhead. Then, as you add costs for visit charges into the system, holdback and overhead will automatically be calculated for those items. 

When building out your budget for a specific trial, you can also factor in additional charges such as protocol start-up fees, protocol execution fees, and protocol close-out fees.

Once you review the budget summary – complete with visit charges, additional charges, and line items total, your site can start receiving completed activities in accounts receivable.  

Challenge 3: Time-consuming tracking of sponsor invoices and payments

Invoicing your sponsor is an ongoing process during a trial – you need to keep track of milestones achieved, as well as costs incurred, and periodically generate invoices accordingly. Because of complicated coverage analysis, most sites miss various invoiceable activities. With Site Financials, it’s easier for you to track items that need to be invoiced and to generate invoices. It’s also easier to track invoices that are pending payment, as well as payments received.

For example, when a screening visit is completed, all of the checked-off visit activity items (with associated dollar amounts) flow into StudyTeam’s Site Financials suite. Here, you can view all of the activity charges, the applied overhead per activity, and the applied holdbacks per activity, as well as the total holdbacks for the visit. Then you can automatically track the money you expect in open receivables compared to the ongoing holdbacks that will be billed at the end of the trial, or when a certain milestone is hit. Check off the invoiceable items and click the convenient “Generate Invoice” button with payment terms and due date included. Download the PDF version and email it directly to your sponsor contact.

Once you finish, you’ll see the dollar amount associated with “Open Receivables” automatically change to factor in your most recent invoice.

Payment reconciliation is the next step. If you receive an ACH transfer or check, you can create a new payment in Site Financials with the right trial and sponsor payer assigned. Once you record each payment, you can see whether those payments have covered all invoices or whether payments are still needed.

With clinical trial billing software in StudyTeam for Sites, you can add critical automations to tracking, billing, and budgeting

When you use StudyTeam for Sites to manage patient recruitment, enrollment, billing, and budgeting for your clinical trials, you can reduce your team’s administrative burdens. That means freeing up more time for patient care while ensuring your site gets paid in full by your sponsor for all relevant trial activities and costs. Eliminate complicated coverage analysis for your team, reduce tedious budgeting tasks, and save time tracking sponsor invoices and payments. When you’re ready, StudyTeam’s Site Financials suite can be set up and available for use in just two weeks.