Survey Results of Start-Up Cycle Times

A 2012 study conducted by the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development shows that academic centers and hospitals take significantly longer to initiate industry-funded clinical trials. Overall, it takes an AMC or hospital more than one year (12.9 months) on average from the pre-study visit to first patient in (FPI) the clinical trial. This compares with 7.9 months for community-based physician practices to complete the same cycle—nearly a 40% time reduction. The Tufts CSDD study evaluated start-up cycle times for 5,296 investigative sites participating in 105 Phase II and III clinical trials. The largest bottleneck is the time from when the contract is received by the center to the time that the contract is executed. AMCs and hospitals take nearly 73% longer than their for-profit counterparts—4.1 months on average versus 1.1 months. Cycle times from contract execution to site initiation, and from site initiation to FPI for non- and for-profit investigative sites are much closer, suggesting that AMCs and hospitals perform more competitively once they get through their less efficient administrative tasks.

Figure 1