Research sites negotiating clinical trial budgets often times face many challenges. Most sites, in the initial negotiation stages, have ideas for optimizing their operations, however have difficulty in reaching the ‘yes, approved’ stage when in budgetary discussions with the sponsors.
Sites encounter two structural disadvantages when negotiating study budgets with sponsors:
- Negotiating study budgets requires unique talents.
Negotiators of clinical trial budgets must mix the business savvy of executives with the regulatory insight of lawyers. It can be challenging to build the right toolbox of skills, business development experience, and industry connections that are outside the wheelhouse of most research sites. Moreover, medical researchers are often focused on providing excellent patient care and quality study data, rather than budget details. - Negotiations require extensive planning and tracking.
In our experience, research site staff are just too busy to fully optimize their negotiating strategies. When preparing for long-term contract talks, you need to pre-determine your site’s goals and potential deal breakers. You should also identify scenarios which require speedy escalation or approval and set up a process for tracking external and internal communications. At most research sites, these concerns take a backseat to patient care, data collection, and regulatory compliance.
With these potential disadvantages, we’ve found that sites are in a stronger negotiating position when they have an experienced partner on their side of the table.
To learn more about how we approach negotiations on behalf of our network of sites, watch the webinar, “Art of Negotiation,” presented by Al Peters – click below!
