Introduction and Objectives: Clinical trials are an important focus in academic otolaryngology practices, but busy practices may pose difficulty for identification and enrollment of patients eligible for trials. We will identify barriers to enrollment from the perspective of both head and neck surgical oncologists and their patients.
Methods: Patients who were eligible for any of the eight clinical trials offered at Jefferson between August and November 2020 were identified. We utilized an Epic EMR phrase to capture if a trial was offered or not and why, whether a patient refused enrollment and why, and patient wait time.
Results: During the 4 month period, the clinic saw 45 new patients with a cancer diagnosis and the EMR SmartPhrase was used 32 times. For those offered a trial, 18.8% agreed to enroll and 6.3% deferred to make a final decision at a later appointment. Of patients that were eligible for a trial but declined, 60% were due to concerns about clinical trial enrollment and 40% because of general disinterest. Reasons for ineligibility were more difficult to track in the group where SmartPhrase was not used because the providers’ thought processes were not declared. We will present average wait time data.
Discussion: Use of the Epic SmartPhrase for evaluation of common barriers to clinical trial enrollment has allowed further documentation for explanations of ineligibility or refusal to enroll. In conjunction, we expect lowering wait times will help optimize trial enrollment
