Partnerships for Medical Practice: Discovery Clinical Trials Seeks Physicians in Rio Grande Valley

SAN ANTONIO - April 25, 2013 - PRLog -- Discovery Clinical Trials is looking to expand its presence in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley.

The San Antonio-based company works with physician groups to provide a turnkey joint venture to manage clinics’ research departments, providing marketing, legal, financial, recruitment and regulatory services to strengthen and increase physician groups’ clinical research capabilities.

Discovery Clinical Trials currently has partnerships with doctors in Arlington, Austin, Dallas, Mission, and San Antonio, as well as Orlando, Fla.

The Rio Grande Valley market, with its large and diverse population, is a natural fit for the company, which has been recognized on the Inc 500|5000 list of the nation’s fastest-growing privately owned companies for the past three years.

Trudy Madan, chief executive officer of Discovery Clinical Trials, notes that research studies can have multiple benefits for physicians and their patients.

“Conducting a research study can supplement a practice’s income as an ancillary revenue opportunity,” she says. “It also offers opportunities for patients to receive additional healthcare at no cost, from study-related medications to lab tests.”

About 2 percent of the U.S. patient population and only 4 percent of physicians get involved with research studies each year, according to the Center for Information and Study on Clinical Research Participation.

Low participation delays the progress of bringing new medications to the market and ultimately make them more expensive, the center reported. In addition, polls show that almost 90 percent of people who take part in studies would be willing to participate again.

http://www.DiscoveryTrials.com has formed partnerships for research studies with both specialists and general practitioners. To date, the company has worked with more than 300 physicians and clinics across the nation, on an average of 150 studies a year.

“Our partnerships remove the roadblocks to research,” Madan says. “We have the experience to handle everything from finding the studies to recruiting participants. Our model allows the physicians to focus on the research and their patients.

“We take the hassles out of research.”

What is Clinical Research?

A clinical study is a comparison test of an experimental medication or medical treatment versus the standard treatment, another medication/treatment, or placebo (inactive lookalike pill). In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration requires all pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers to prove the safety and efficacy of medications or treatments prior to receiving approval to sell their product in the public market place.  Clinical studies vary greatly in size depending upon the phase of research.  For pharmaceuticals, clinical studies are commonly classified into four phases:

•Phase I studies are the first stage of testing in human subjects and normally include a small (20-80) group of healthy volunteers.

• Phase II studies are performed on larger groups (20-300) and are designed to assess how well the drug works.  These take place only after the initial safety of the study drug has been confirmed in Phase I trials,

• Phase III studies are randomized controlled multicenter trials on large patient groups (300–3,000 or more depending upon the disease/medical condition studied) and are aimed at being the definitive assessment of how effective the drug is, in comparison with current 'gold standard' treatment.

• Phase IV studies involve the safety surveillance and ongoing technical support of a drug after it receives permission to be sold.

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