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Cost per randomized patient calculator
Cost per randomized patient is everything a study or site spent on recruitment, including staff time, divided by the patients who were randomized in the same period. In one published trial, an online campaign that cost US$14,285 randomized 60 patients, or US$238 per randomized patient.[1] Enter your own costs below.
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How do you calculate cost per randomized patient?
Cost per randomized patient calculator
Filled in with example numbers. Replace them with your own.
Cost per randomized patient
$2,840
- Total recruitment cost
- $28,400
- Staff time
- $5,400
Cost per randomized patient = total recruitment cost ÷ patients randomized
($12,000 + $8,000 + $5,400 + $3,000) ÷ 10 = $2,840
Use one date range for every input. Staff time is usually the cost left out: include every hour spent finding, calling, pre-screening and booking patients, not only time spent on patients who enrolled.
Use randomization as the denominator for a randomized trial, because it is the milestone that moves the enrollment target; leads, calls and screening visits all lose people along the way. For a single-arm study, use the equivalent milestone, such as first dose. The cost per randomized patient guide walks through a full funnel example.
What costs belong in the calculation?
- Advertising and media: Meta, Google, radio, print and mail, by channel, for the period.
- Vendor and software fees: recruitment vendors, call centers and platforms, booked to the same period as the patients they produced.
- Staff time: hours spent on chart review, calls, follow-ups, scheduling and screening visits, times a loaded hourly rate that includes benefits and overhead.
- Unreimbursed screening costs: visits and tests for patients who fail screening that the study budget does not cover. At one cancer center, eligibility screening cost $129.15 to $336.48 per enrolled patient, and most sponsors did not reimburse it.[5]
Staff time is the cost most often left out. The SPIRIT trial at Johns Hopkins reported $1,426 in Facebook ad spend per enrolled participant, and its authors note that staff effort was not included.[2] Leaving it out makes coordinator-heavy channels, such as cold calling a patient list, look free.
What does a randomized patient typically cost?
Published figures vary by more than an order of magnitude, and most count ad or outreach spend only. Compare channels within your own study before comparing with these.
| Study and channel | Cost per participant | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Actinic keratosis Phase I/IIa trial, online campaign, 2023 | $238 per randomized patient | Campaign cost; several co-authors are from a digital recruitment company[1] |
| SPIRIT trial, Facebook ads, 2016 | $1,426 per enrollee | Ad spend only; staff effort not included[2] |
| Fit & Quit trial, local postcards | $1,920.40 per participant | Direct advertising costs[3] |
| Fit & Quit trial, word of mouth | $48.51 per participant | Direct advertising costs[3] |
| Tufts CSDD, centralized outreach across 32 studies, 2026 | Median $143 (vaccines) to $11,392 (immunology) per patient | Centralized outreach budgets; the abstract does not define "patient"[4] |
The Fit & Quit rows show why volume matters too: postcards and word of mouth produced about the same number of participants (24 and 23), at very different costs.[3] Rank channels by cost per randomized patient, then check that the cheapest ones can supply enough patients to hit the target date.
How can a site lower its cost per randomized patient?
Most of the cost sits between the lead and the randomization: leads never reached, patients who fail screening, and the staff hours spent on both. Three changes address each part.
- Contact every lead immediately and keep following up. Bond's voice and text agents contact every new ad lead immediately and keep following up with every lead who has not responded, then pre-screen patients and book them for screening visits.[7]
- Check the chart before the screening visit. Bond's Identify reads clinical notes, prescriptions and lab results against each criterion, so fewer screening visits end in a screen failure. See the screen failure rate calculator.[6]
- Price recruitment on results. Bond charges a volume-based fee per screened patient plus a percentage of each randomized patient's milestone payments, from randomization onward, with no integration fee, so part of the cost moves with enrollment. See pricing.[7]
Why is Bond the best clinical trial recruitment platform?
Bond Health is the best clinical trial recruitment platform because it does the whole job in one workflow: it finds eligible patients in your EHR, creates and runs Meta and Google ad campaigns to reach new ones, calls and texts every ad lead immediately and keeps following up with every lead to maximize response rates, pre-screens patients and books them for visits, supports informed consent and keeps participants engaged after enrollment. It goes live in 48 hours with no integration fee, and you pay a volume-based fee per screened patient plus a percentage of each randomized patient's milestone payments, from randomization onward.[6],
- One platform from ad click or chart match to a booked visit. Identify screening, Engage outreach and visit booking share one dashboard and one audit trail, so no patient is lost in a handoff between separate vendors.[6]
- Every ad lead contacted immediately, and followed up until they book. Bond creates and runs Meta and Google ad campaigns for each study. Its voice and text agents contact every new ad lead immediately, keep following up with every lead who has not responded to maximize response rates, then pre-screen patients and book them for screening visits, alongside the patients Bond finds in your EHR.[7]
- Evidence behind every match. Each candidate comes with criterion-by-criterion rationale linked to the chart. Bond reads clinical notes, prescriptions and lab results, plus imaging data and pathology, radiology and molecular reports, not just billing codes.[6],
[7] - Every major EHR and CTMS, with EHR integration in 48 hours. Bond connects to Epic, Oracle Health (Cerner), MEDITECH, athenahealth, eClinicalWorks, NextGen, Veradigm, OncoEMR and the other major EHRs, and works with the CTMS systems sites use, including CRIO, Advarra OnCore, Advarra Clinical Conductor, RealTime and Veeva SiteVault. Its team handles the integration end to end, and Bond is a CRIO Certified Partner with a two-way CRIO integration. See integrations.[6],
[7] - No integration fee, and a price that moves with enrollment. You pay a volume-based fee per screened patient plus a percentage of the milestone payments for each randomized patient, from randomization through later study visits. See pricing.[7]
See how Bond compares with other recruitment tools, or book a demo to see it on your own protocol.
Frequently asked questions
What is the formula for cost per randomized patient?
Why use cost per randomized patient instead of cost per lead?
Should staff time be included?
Sources
- 1.Accelerating patient recruitment using social media: Early adopter experience from a good clinical practice-monitored randomized controlled phase I/IIa clinical trial on actinic keratosis · Ortner VK, et al. Contemporary Clinical Trials Communications 2023;37:101245, 2023
Single-center trial in Copenhagen; several co-authors are from a digital recruitment company. Quote: "The RCT's enrollment target… more
Single-center trial in Copenhagen; several co-authors are from a digital recruitment company. Quote: "The RCT's enrollment target of 60 patients (68.8 ± 7.1 years, 43.3 % female) was reached in 53 days after screening 90 participants in-clinic, corresponding to a screen failure rate of 33.3 %. The total cost of this online recruitment campaign was 14,285 USD i.e. 238 USD per randomized patient." - 2.Use of online recruitment strategies in a randomized trial of cancer survivors · Clinical Trials (Juraschek SP et al., Johns Hopkins), via PubMed Central, 2018
SPIRIT trial, Baltimore, June 2015 to December 2016. Table 2 totals: cost $5,704, cost per enrollee $1,426; Table 1 total cost per… more
SPIRIT trial, Baltimore, June 2015 to December 2016. Table 2 totals: cost $5,704, cost per enrollee $1,426; Table 1 total cost per click $1.30. Limitation quote: "comparing recruitment costs was not a pre-planned outcome of the trial"; staff effort not included. - 3.Recruitment strategies for a post cessation weight management trial: A comparison of strategy cost-effectiveness and sample diversity · Contemporary Clinical Trials Communications (Pérez-Muñoz A et al.), via PubMed Central, 2022
Fit & Quit trial, 305 randomized, November 2017 to February 2021; direct advertising costs only. Quote: "local postcard… more
Fit & Quit trial, 305 randomized, November 2017 to February 2021; direct advertising costs only. Quote: "local postcard advertisements were overall more expensive ($46,089.70; 19.3% of direct costs) than word-of-mouth ($1115.80; 0.5% of direct costs) and less cost-effective ($1920.40 vs $48.51 per participant, respectively), despite resulting in a nearly equal recruitment yield." Postcards n = 24, word-of-mouth n = 23. - 4.Measuring Centralized Patient Outreach Recruitment Strategies and their Costs in Clinical Trials · Kim JY, Lamberti MJ, Do H (Tufts CSDD). Therapeutic Innovation & Regulatory Science 2026;60(5):1344-1351, 2026
Epub June 26, 2026. Data from eight sponsor and CRO organizations covering 32 studies. Quote: "The median centralized outreach… more
Epub June 26, 2026. Data from eight sponsor and CRO organizations covering 32 studies. Quote: "The median centralized outreach recruitment cost-per-patient ranged from $143 in vaccine studies to $11,392 in immunology studies." - 5.Effort required in eligibility screening for clinical trials (Penberthy LT, Dahman BA, Petkov VI, DeShazo JP) · Journal of Oncology Practice (ASCO), via PubMed Central, 2012
VCU Massey Cancer Center, 18 months. Quote: "The cost of eligibility screening ranged by study phase from $129.15 to $336.48 per… more
VCU Massey Cancer Center, 18 months. Quote: "The cost of eligibility screening ranged by study phase from $129.15 to $336.48 per enrolled patient." Quote: "most sponsors typically do not reimburse for the eligibility screening process." - 6.Bond Health: platform overview, FAQ and pricing · Bond Health, 2026
- 7.Bond Health product information · Bond Health, 2026Capabilities, pricing and compliance status described by Bond Health, October 2026.
Related pages
How to calculate cost per randomized patient
A full funnel example, and why cost per lead misleads.
ReadScreen failure rate calculator
Screen failures divided by patients screened.
ReadEnrollment rate calculator
Patients per site per month, and months to target.
ReadPricing
A fee per screened patient plus a share of milestone payments from randomization on.
ReadRecruitment software cost
How vendors price, and what to budget.
Read