There’s a few common payment models used by patient recruitment firms. The agency model where the client will pay a fee for the service. Any associated costs – such as advertising spend – are also paid by the client. The main risk here is that there may be no patients recruited.

The ‘pay per patient’ model is based on a fee per consenting trial participant. The risk here is taken by the patient recruitment firm for any ad spend.

And the ‘pay per lead’ model – where the firm is compensated per patient lead referred into the system. This model tends to be more widely open to abuse, with low quality leads still attracting a fee, whether they become trial participants or not. So my main recommendation is to use the ‘pay per patient’ model, or the agency model if it better fits your circumstances.