Postmarketing Surveillance: Effects of Compensation on Patient Self-Monitoring

Abstract

As part of a large-scale postmarketing surveillance project using patient-initiated telephone reports (with follow-up questionnaires) of possible adverse or beneficial drug reactions, we conducted a pilot study offering different levels of compensation ($0, $10, or $25) for study participation. The effects of compensation on recruitment rate and the quality of participating subjects' study behavior were evaluated. The percentage of acceptance for the full sample of poential volunteers (N = 2,955) was monotonically related to the amount of compensation promised with $25 resulting in a 59% increase, and $10 resulting in a 34% increase in acceptance over no compensation. Both $10 and $25 compensation effectively decreased the percentage of invalid patients from 13.5% to 7.6% and 6.9%, respectively. Subject compensation also significantly decreased the time-consuming and expensive task of tracking to ensure that study questionnaires were completed and returned. There was no evidence that compensation influenced a patient's decision to initiate a phone call to our centralized monitoring station to report drug experiences. The authors conclude that the concept of recruiting self-monitoring patients with modest compensation is a reasonable complementary approach for postmarketing surveillance