How Bon Secours Mercy Health transformed research finances with Verily Viewpoint Site CTMS

For clinical trial sites, proper tracking and management of financials can make the difference between operating with comfortable margins, or taking heavy losses and straining teams. With Verily Viewpoint Site CTMS, sites have the opportunity to enhance their financial performance through increased central oversight, streamlined processes, and data-driven insights.

In partnership with Verily, Bon Secours Mercy Health (BSMH) transformed its research program to a network of sites that thrives financially. The results from implementing Site CTMS were remarkable.

Increased profitability – All BSHM sites using Site CTMS enhanced their profitability. One particular site, whose research program’ s future had unclear fiscal sustainability, turned it around and posted a significant profit within a year.

Strengthened relationships – Enhanced operational efficiency has made BSMH a preferred partner to many sponsors, and led to clinical research organizations (CROs) recommending them for trials.

Maximizing staffing efficiencies – Improved financial performance enabled BSMH to maximize research staff throughout their network, support new studies, ensure more focused attention to patients, and reduce strain on existing staff.

This success story demonstrates the power of technology to drive financial health and operational efficiency in clinical research, allowing sites to focus on what matters most: bringing more innovative treatment options to their patients.

BSMH — Bon Secours Mercy Health — is a renowned healthcare system with research sites across multiple states that faced significant financial challenges in its clinical research program, much like many community-based health systems do.

Their disparate systems, manual processes, and a lack of centralized financial oversight led to inconsistencies, inefficiencies, and uncollected and unrealized clinical research revenue. 

Sites within the network were grappling with the burden of tracking budgets, managing invoices, and reconciling payments manually. Often, this resulted in errors, delays, and missed revenue opportunities. The absence of real-time financial data also hindered BSMH's ability to make informed decisions, optimize trial portfolios, and ensure the long-term sustainability of the research program.

Recognizing the urgent need for change, BSMH partnered with Verilly to implement Viewpoint Site CTMS — an easy-to-use, comprehensive solution designed to streamline financial management and improve operational efficiency in clinical research.

This strategic implementation empowered BSMH to optimize trial portfolios, prioritize profitable enrollment opportunities, engage in preemptive workload planning, and reduce underpayment, ultimately leading to a remarkable financial turnaround.

Strategic trial portfolio optimization
With Site CTMS, digitization technology automatically classifies trials by a number of characteristics, e.g., treatment area, sponsor and/or CRO, and federally funded vs. industry-sponsored trials. This data in the Site CTMS insights module provided BSMH with a centralized platform to analyze its trial mix and corresponding financial performance across their nine sites.

Cutting the data across multiple dimensions allowed BSMH to identify gaps, strengths and improvement opportunities to consider when seeking and accepting new trial opportunities. By strategically balancing trials, they built a sustainable research program that meets both patient needs and financial objectives.

Targeted profitable enrollment
As trials were being executed, Site CTMS empowered BSMH to identify under-enrolled trials with high-profitability potential based on their past performance. By highlighting these opportunities, Site CTMS enabled BSMH’s central research team to collaborate with individual sites, helping them strategically focus recruitment efforts. 

This proactive approach ensures resources are utilized efficiently, and financial gains are realized from trials that offer the greatest return on investment.

Proactive workload management
Site CTMS's workload forecasting capabilities enabled BSMH to anticipate staffing needs and circumvent potential bottlenecks. By visualizing upcoming visit volumes, types of visits, e.g. screening, treatment, closeout, and resource requirements, e.g., investigators, coordinators, other clinicians. They could also optimize staff allocation, ensure adequate coverage, and prevent delays or disruptions in trial execution.

In addition to early identification of bottlenecks, BSMH also found periods with surplus capacity to start new studies or increase recruitment efforts for existing studies.

This proactive approach improves operational efficiency, reduces staff burnout, and enhances the overall patient experience.

Enhanced financial oversight and accuracy
Site CTMS facilitates meticulous financial tracking, and this provided BSMH with real-time visibility into budgets, invoices, and payments across all research sites. This centralized oversight enabled BSMH to identify discrepancies, reduce payment errors, and ensure accurate and timely revenue collection. By automating many manual processes, Site CTMS freed up valuable staff time, allowing their site network to focus on higher-value activities and optimized financial performance.

Bon Secours Mercy Health is committed to its clinical research program, particularly the successful conduct of clinical trials, which has been significantly enhanced by the adoption and system-wide implementation of Verily Viewpoint Site CTMS.

Through strategic trial portfolio optimization, targeted enrollment efforts, proactive workload management, and enhanced financial oversight, the health system not only secured its research program's future, but also strengthened its position as a trusted partner in advancing medical innovation.

From this success, Bon Secours Mercy Health serves as an example of how Verily Viewpoint Site CTMS advanced technology can enable research organizations to achieve financial sustainability while fulfilling their mission of improving patient care.

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