Early Contact Newsletter Winter 2020

ECER newsletter – Winter 2020

Excess Treatment Costs - One Year On

It has now been over a year since the new process for the management of Excess Treatment Costs was introduced. The Early Contact team have validated close to 200 SoECATs in this time period (including transitional studies). Over a third of the validated SoECATs have identified excess treatment costs, and over 10% of validated SoECATs with excess treatment costs have been funded.

There has been a small improvement in requests for support coming through earlier but we would like to continue to encourage researchers to contact us at least two weeks before the funding deadline to allow enough time to provide support. Stage one applications do not require a SoECAT but we would encourage researchers to link in with the Early Contact team as an Early Contact Lead can be allocated to provide support. Please also continue to let us know if applications have been successful or not so we can update our records accordingly.

To read about the progress made nationally follow this link: https://www.england.nhs.uk/commissioning/supporting-commissioners/research/etc/

SoECAT training

SoECAT training dates have been confirmed for 2020. These will take place at Birmingham Research Park. Please contact the Workforce Development Team for more information on dates and times (e: training.crnwestmidlands@nihr.ac.uk). Training sessions are moving from monthly to quarterly but additional sessions can be provided based on demand at sites within the West Midlands. Since the new process was introduced 7 training sessions have been delivered which have been well received. Despite the SoECAT being an Excel based tool... words selected to describe the SoECAT training in the evaluation forms have been 'exciting', 'thought provoking' and 'stimulating!'

SoECAT clinics

SoECAT clinics are back for 2020! SoECAT clinics will continue on Thursday afternoons for one to one support for specific studies. Other date and venues are available, if requested.
SoECAT clinics poster: http://bit.ly/SoECATClinics

SoECAT webinar

To support the SoECAT training being provided by the Early Contact team, a Webinar has now been created to explain the step by step process of completing a SoECAT form.

Early Contact feedback

Over 2019, the Early Contact team received an average of 9/10 from our service users. We have reviewed all feedback and have made the following changes:

• We have delivered several SoECAT training sessions around the network and offer regular SoECAT clinic sessions. We also have a SoECAT webinar, researcher checklist and flowchart available. We have received positive feedback from our stakeholders about the various SoECAT support available.
• We are trying to share information with all our stakeholders and have connections in various regional universities outside of the Clinical Trial Units. Please check our Twitter account for any new information.
• All feedback for the SoECAT and the Excess Treatment Cost process has been provided to the relevant organisations. The SoECAT is regularly updated, based on feedback from stakeholders.