Impact of COVID-19 on Clinical Trials Costs to Patients

This environmental scan, conducted by Mathematica and funded by ASPE, examines the types of direct and direct costs to patients associated with clinical trial participation. It also explores the effect of COVID-19 on costs to patients, including cost implications of clinical trial innovations widely implemented during COVID-19 and other efforts to increase diversity of clinical trials. The environmental scan concludes that there is limited research that quantifies direct or indirect costs to patients during clinical trials and no studies on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic or clinical trial innovations on these costs. Among the available literature, travel costs and patient-reported financial toxicity are most often studied, and much of the literature focused on cancer clinical trials. There were also limited findings on what type of care is considered routine care by insurers during the course of a clinical trial and limited findings on the impacts of COVID-19 on this coverage or associated costs. However, there is evidence that routine care coverage policies did not address other insurance-related barriers to clinical trial participation like clinical trial sites being considered out-of-network. Finally, based on the literature reviewed, Black and Hispanic patients, patients over age 65, and rural patients are less likely to participate in clinical trials. Because differences in socioeconomic factors, like education level, income, and insurance type, may be an underlying cause of these disparities, addressing the cost of participating in clinical trials might have a downstream effect of improving clinical trial participation among these groups. Further information on estimates of direct and indirect costs to patients by clinical trial type (phase and disease) and on differences for underrepresented groups is needed, including among people with disabilities and older adults. Research to estimate the impact of certain clinical trial innovations like the shift to remote monitoring prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic on these costs could inform whether increased uptake of a decentralized trial approach could address financial and nonfinancial barriers to clinical trial participation.