2019 HSR&D/QUERI National Conference

4110 — Reducing Time of Patient Recruitment for Clinical Trials in the Veterans Affairs Healthcare System

Lead/Presenter: Olga Efimova,  Resource Center - VINCI
All Authors: Efimova O (VINCI), Steven Oostema(VINCI), Lacey Lewis (VINCI) Elise Gatsby (VINCI) Meng Chun Ling (VINCI) Kevin Malohi(VINCI) Jeffrey Scehnet(VINCI) Brian Robison(VINCI) Tori Anglin(VINCI) Terrence Crowe(VINCI) James Potter(VINCI) Scott Duvall (VINCI)

Objectives:
One of the major factors of success for clinical trials is patient recruitment. VINCI Services is a Health Services Research and Development (HSRandD) Resource Center that utilizes VA's vast electronic medical record to provide investigators with VA patient data, study feasibilities, cohort creation, and potential research participant lists. Use of EMR databases, over traditional medical record review, as a primary source for patient recruitment can be an effective process in terms of overall cost and time.

Methods:
Patient list can be provided for IRB-approved study. The VINCI project manager works with the researcher to define the cohort and each inclusion and exclusion criteria using a funnel analysis. Cohort creation is conducted by VINCI data managers using Microsoft SQL to query the VA Corporate Data Warehouse (CDW) based on the required inclusion/exclusion criteria listed in the funnel analysis. The final patient list is given to the researcher along with any notes of specifically how the data was pulled by the data manager. The data manager is also able to provide other requested variables the researcher may want in the final patient list: patient information, distance from VA medical centers, prescriptions, lab values, diagnosis codes, treatment and procedures including dates that are associated with these items. VINCI creates patient lists on one time or recurrent basis.

Results:
VINCI provides patient for approximately 50 projects per year. The average turnaround time from initial project request to delivery of a patient list to the researcher is 14.4 days, with a minimum turnaround time of one day and a maximum of 38 days. Initial project request is defined as the day VINCI Services receives the patient list request. Delivery is defined as the day the patient list is placed in the researcher's project folder.

Implications:
Amount of time for recruitment of patients for clinical trials can be reduced by using the VINCI Services.

Impacts:
Utilizing VINCI frees up time that the researcher would spend on cohort development to do other work. With an average time of approximately two weeks to obtain a viable, highly reliable patient list, the use of VINCI Services is a time and cost-effective resource.