We all know that having a clinical trial management system (CTMS) streamlines and simplifies the running of clinical trials, and that Oracle’s Siebel Clinical (Siebel CTMS) is the leader in the space. But, working in Clinical Finance, you might not know exactly how Siebel CTMS could help YOU take a load off. Let me give you some insight.
In Siebel CTMS, the payments module is one of the most impressive areas of the system. It starts with the Clinical Administator creating a subject visit schedule template (based on the protocol) with standard payment amounts for each prodedure, visit, or milestone, depending on how your organization handles site payments.
Then, when a site is starting up, that subject visit schedule is applied to the site, including the standard payment amounts, resulting in the creation of a starting point for the site budget. Since there are always exceptions to the rule, Clinical Finance is able to modify payment amounts per site, based on the site contract. These modifications only need to be made once, even though they will apply to all subjects.
As subjects enroll at a site, the system automatically sets up planned payments for each subject, which is rather useful when pulling together accruals and forecasting expenses. As they complete visits, the planned payments are rolled into payment requests that can be processed at any time – monthly, quarterly, by milestone, etc. If a payment amount is found to be incorrect, Clinical Finance can correct it ad hoc without affecting any other subjects or visits. Finally, the payment request is routed for approval.
Once of the greatest aspects of the payments module is that it prevents the same payment from being made more than once. The way the system is designed makes it virtually impossible. No more overpayments!
Once a payment request has been approved and paid, details about the payment can be entered – check number, payment amount, payment date – to close the payment loop. And, of course, all of the above can be queried to learn which payments are past due, to investigate questions from site personnel, and to identify trends.
During site close-out, the payments module auto-calculates the final site payment, which squares up site withholding. Voila!
In addition to payments related to subjects, Siebel CTMS includes functionality for initial payments, site advances, travel expenses, IRB fees, and the ability to identify an infinite number of other site payment types to support the level of granularity that your organization needs. This is particularly helpful for complying with the Physician Payment Sunshine Act.
On top of the impressive site payments module described above, Perficient’s Siebel CTMS accelerator, ASCEND, includes a separate module for budgeting and tracking study-level expenses: CRO fees, monitoring travel expenses, shipping fees, subject matter expert consulting fees, etc.
No time for all of that detail? No problem. At the site level, study-country level, study level, and program level, Siebel CTMS includes a current financial snapshot to give you an instant look at where things stand at any given moment. In ASCEND, we added study-level budget and tracking information to the snapshot to give you a complete sense of the financial status of a study or program – not just the site payments piece.
To learn more about Siebel CTMS or Perficient’s ASCEND CTMS, contact us. To make life even easier, integrate Siebel CTMS with your ERP system.
