Patient identification
Where potential participants are found, who owns prescreening, how clinic and research teams communicate, and whether eligible patients enter a trial conversation in time.
Clinical trial enrollment consulting
Find the point where eligible participants are being lost.
Merindale helps research teams break enrollment into measurable transitions so the site can distinguish a true recruitment problem from an internal screening, approach, workflow, or participant-burden problem.
The problem
Enrollment is one number. The work behind it is a pathway.
A trial can be under-enrolling for very different reasons: the eligible population is smaller than expected, potential participants are not being identified, the research team is notified too late, screen failures cluster around one criterion, patients are approached after the decision window has narrowed, or the protocol creates practical burdens the site did not anticipate.
Those problems need different responses. Merindale starts by decomposing the pathway instead of assuming the answer is more outreach.
Where the internal pathway is healthy and patient volume is genuinely the constraint, we can help the team reach that conclusion with evidence and identify the next referral, network, community, or sponsor-level conversation that may be needed.
What we review
The participant pathway from identification to enrollment.
The goal is to see the transitions clearly enough to make the next operating decision obvious.
Eligibility & screen failure
Which inclusion or exclusion criteria account for losses, whether feasibility assumptions match the population, and where screen-failure patterns need to be understood.
Approach & consent
Timing, ownership, participant communication, reasons for decline where appropriately available, and whether the trial is being introduced in a way that supports an informed decision.
Participant burden & handoffs
Visit frequency, travel, scheduling, caregiver demands, procedures, and the cross-functional handoffs that can make participation difficult even when the patient is technically eligible.
Measures that help
Make the transitions visible before adding another campaign.
Depending on the study, a useful enrollment review may look at identification-to-approach rate, screen failures by criterion, approach-to-consent rate, time from identification to consent, participant decline reasons, and aging between key steps.
Merindale does not promise a specific enrollment result. Protocol design, patient population, standard-of-care options, sponsor decisions, site footprint, competing trials, and participant preference all matter. Our role is to help the site understand and improve the parts of the pathway it can influence.
Typical outputs may include a participant-pathway map, screening measures, loss-point analysis, role ownership, review cadence, and targeted workflow changes.
Experience behind the service
Oncology and GU enrollment experience from the site side.
The service is informed by hands-on oncology and complex-trial site experience spanning participant identification, screening, eligibility, consent, study management, portfolio operations, and investigator-initiated research carried from start-up through enrollment.
Under-enrolling studies
When the study is open but the team cannot explain where potential participants are being lost.
Site networks
When enrollment performance varies and the network needs a common way to diagnose local pathways.
Research programs
When clinic-to-research handoffs, coordinator capacity, or participant burden are affecting trial access.
Sponsor/CRO partners
When the question is about a site's enrollment workflow rather than broad media or advertising execution.
Related guidance
Start with what the site can see.
Our GU clinical trial screening guide explains the identification, screen-failure, approach, burden, consent, and enrollment transitions we would look at first.
Our clinical trial site feasibility guide shows why patient fit and enrollment assumptions should be pressure-tested before activation.
For the broader service portfolio, return to Clinical Trial Site Operations Consulting Services.
Is the study open but enrollment still hard to explain?
Bring the screening data, the pathway as the team understands it today, and what you have already tried. We will start by identifying what should be measured before recommending more activity.