There is no simple, out-of-the-box solution for clinical trial travel. Each trial sponsor deals with varying site requirements, levels of patient care and accommodation needs. Essentially, there is no one-size-fits-all option for getting patients to the trial site and making them comfortable throughout their stay.
As is often the case with trial coordination, Colpitts clinical travel experts must customize every aspect of project management, beginning with their planning approach. For one clinical client in particular, the Colpitts team arranged for regular conference calls which were to take place each time patient travel needed to be reviewed before booking. These calls were necessary to ensure that the particularly immobile patients involved in this trial could travel quickly and comfortably to the trial site after a specific medical event.
One such conference call was requested by the trial sponsor late on a Friday afternoon. A patient needed to fly from Venezuela to Philadelphia the following week, which happened to be spring break time for college students, meaning flight options were extremely limited on short notice. Given the patient’s medical condition, an air ambulance charter would have been an acceptable form of travel, but at the time there was a government ban on all U.S. travel into Venezuela.
The odds were seemingly stacked against the Colpitts team, but the conference call facilitated an astute solution to the challenges at hand. The team arranged for the patient to fly commercially to Panama City, where an air ambulance charter then picked up the patient and flew him to Philadelphia. All travel details were confirmed within 24 hours to ensure that the patient and trial sponsor had accurate travel itinerary as far in advance as possible.