The costs associated with using the RCIC vary by project and are dependent on multiple factors such as the number of hospitals involved in a study, length of time that various services will be needed over the course of the project, and the amount of data to be collected during medical record review. Therefore, the costs are determined individually for each protocol.
Utilizing the RCIC provides a cost savings to investigators as costs normally incurred by each individual study are spread across several studies utilizing the RCIC. The time needed by the individual investigator to recruit, hire, and train qualified personnel is eliminated by using the RCIC, shortening the time from protocol development to accrual and avoiding the disruption caused by high staff turnover common in these positions. The RCIC is staffed by highly skilled certified tumor registrars (CTR’s) who bring years of experience to the areas of patient identification and medical record review. In addition, many of the administrative barriers to access that often face investigators as they approach outside institutions, particularly non-research-oriented community hospitals, have been overcome by the RCIC. The core paves the way for fast and efficient IRB approval, case identification, medical record review, pathology retrieval, and identification of controls thus enabling the principal investigator and key study staff to direct their time to other critical project areas.
Once project costs are determined, the RCIC will provide investigators with a budget, in spreadsheet format, as well as a Word document containing a description/justification of the services to be utilized and the annual cost for each service.