Clinical trial referrals don’t usually fail because patients aren’t interested.
They fail because too many patients are pushed downstream before they’re truly qualified, informed, and ready for the next step.
That creates a familiar pattern across studies: high referral volume, low referral quality, overloaded site teams, delayed enrollment, and preventable screening waste that gets blamed on recruitment alone.
A recent 2025 oncology study helps frame the issue clearly. Across three cancer centers, screen-failure rates ranged from 21% to 26%. The most common causes were radiological, biological, and clinical. The authors concluded that getting key patient information earlier may help reduce unnecessary screen failures (Korakis et al., 2025).
That is the real problem.
Not just whether patients are entering the funnel, but whether the right patients are reaching the site with enough qualification and readiness to move forward.
Read on to see how Antidote helps improve referral quality upstream before screen failures reach the site.
Volume does not fix qualification
Traditional recruitment often emphasizes the top of the funnel:
- more impressions
- more clicks
- more form fills
- more referrals
But more referrals do not automatically mean better enrollment performance.
If too many patients are referred before their likely eligibility, readiness, or practical fit are clarified, the burden shifts to the site. Coordinators have to review more weak-fit referrals. Patients may arrive without enough context. Stronger candidates can get delayed while teams work through the noise.
This is where Antidote’s model stands out.
Antidote’s precision recruitment approach is positioned around a simple idea: combine data-driven outreach with human support to generate higher-quality patient engagement and referrals.
What Antidote brings to the process
Antidote’s precision recruitment is based on several strengths:
- deep digital expertise to improve quality
- working with partners to meet patients where they are
- portfolio-level efficiency
- site follow-up services that close the loop
Patients are thoroughly prescreened before referring them, all the way down to labs when necessary, and provides engagement tracking and optimization throughout the process.
That matters because many screen failures are not random.
These are the result of gaps earlier in the pathway.
The better question is not simply, “How many referrals came in?”
It is, “How many were meaningfully qualified before the site had to do the work?”
Why patient centricity matters
Poor referral quality is not only an operational issue. It is also a communication issue.
Antidote’s own patient survey data shows that patients want more useful detail earlier in the journey. In one survey of 145 patients, 41% reported learning about clinical trials through online search listings. Nearly 30% said they wanted more detail on the procedures or drugs being tested, while 25% said information on time commitment would be most useful as they considered participation.
That matters because patients cannot move forward confidently if the first step is vague, incomplete, or difficult to evaluate.
Antidote works with 250+ nonprofit and patient advocacy partners, along with a broader network of 300+ partner organizations, to connect with engaged patients through trusted channels.
This is more than a reach strategy. It’s a smarter way to connect with better-informed, better-prepared patients earlier in the journey.
Topics: For Sponsors
