Innovating Clinical Trials
Welcome to Innovating Clinical Trials, the podcast designed for clinical research professionals eager to deepen their understanding of clinical trials through concise, insightful segments. Join your hosts, Liam Eves and Ted Trafford, as they uncover the core issues in clinical research, reflect on the industry, and challenge conventional wisdom.
Ted Trafford - https://probitymedical.com/
With 30 years of experience in clinical research, Ted serves as the Director of Business Development, driving business growth and leading Feasibility and Site Relationship teams at Probity Medical Research, a clinical trial site administrative support company with a consortium of 75+ sites across four countries. As a writer and speaker, Ted contributes to thought leadership and strategic initiatives in the clinical trials industry, leveraging his extensive experience and creative approach to drive meaningful discussion and progress for Sponsors, CROs, Sites and Technology Vendors.
Liam Eves - https://www.theendpointpodcast.com/
Liam's held executive roles in SMOs and CROs, and led all major functions of trial delivery. His journey into the field began unexpectedly after an injury ended his career as a professional footballer. Over the years Liam has optimized trial delivery methods / systems for effective enrollment and trial delivery. Currently, he focuses on building and advising companies in the clinical trial space.
Opinions expressed are those of the participants and not their employers.
Innovating Clinical Trials
Ep 2.29: "That's Not a Performance Problem, It's a Structural One" Scott Burgher on Why Sites Stop Recruiting (Part 2/3)
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In Part 2 of this three-part conversation, Liam and Ted continue with Scott Burgher, Director of Patient Operations at Quest Diagnostics, going deeper into why recruitment keeps falling short.
Liam reframes the problem from the ground up: the industry treats recruitment as a marketing function obsessed with filling the top of the funnel, when the real work is moving patients all the way through it. Scott connects this to his experience running end-to-end mock trials years ago, testing the full patient journey, not just whether an ad worked, but whether someone could realistically sit through a four-hour infusion or navigate a handoff between site staff who'd never met them.
The conversation turns to site economics, which Scott calls structurally broken: sites invest in staff and training months before seeing payment, and when that investment doesn't pay off, they quietly stop prioritizing the study. As Scott puts it, that's not a performance problem, it's a structural one, though it shows up in the data looking exactly like one.
Ted pushes the conversation toward what actually closes that gap: a real feedback loop between sponsors and sites, where issues get surfaced, acted on, and communicated back, not just logged and forgotten.
A grounded look at what it actually takes to fix recruitment from the inside.