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The panel explores three less obvious ways that the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the ability to recruit the right patients into clinical trials.

This week, SurfingNASH discusses why recruiting and maintaining the right patients for NASH clinical trials will require focus, discipline, and perhaps a new way of thinking about trial recruitment. 

When we think of how COVID-19 has reshaped medicine, we usually think about patient fear and the impact of staff exposure. Through the recruitment window, the issues change. Recruitment becomes more challenging because (a) patient-physician communication has declined in frequency and mostly been via video; (b() physician-physician education has fallen prey to tighter schedules, larger patient workloads, and inability to meet due to social distancing; and (c) physicians whose schedules are jammed with more patients and constrained to what they can achieve in telehealth visits have less time and energy to think "outside the box" and explore new areas. Listen to hear a more graphic picture of how these phenomena interact and amplify.