Clinical Trial Patient Vital Status

How does OmniTrace determine the vital status of a clinical trial patient lost to follow-up?  What a great question! 

Our first efforts are to establish that the clinical trial patient is alive and determine the patient’s current address and phone number.  Each search can be quite different, and our research procedures will vary depending on the makeup of the clinical trial [e.g., age of patients, economic status of patients, health status of patients, geographic information (urban or rural)]. 

When conducting a search for an “alive” patient, we are typically flagged by our proprietary databases if the patient has been deceased for more than thirty days–our databases pull directly from the Social Security Death Index (SSDI).

If we are unable to determine a patient’s current address and the SSDI does not indicate that the patient is deceased, we check available state death indexes which often contain vital status information not in the SSDI.

If we are still unable to determine a patient’s vital status, we search available public records for reported deaths.  These public records consist of possible obituaries and newspaper articles. (Obituaries will vary depending on the state and year of death.)

We also research where the patient was employed and if the patient was a member of any clubs or associations.  We then determine whether any of these entities have posted a notice of death or a memorial.

These are the primary death record resources utilized in HIPAA Compliant Searching.  In a non-HIPAA search, we might simply call family members for patient vital status information.

Additional:

When searching for a patient, we research many database sources such as property deeds and real time phone listings.  These are very current public records and will greatly narrow down the time-frame of a possible death.  We research if anyone new has recently purchased or moved into the patients’s most current listed address.  If not, this is a good sign that the patient still resides there.  We also research whether the patient’s consumer/credit history has had recent changes.  Are there bills going to the patient’s address?  Are there any other addresses?

There are many other nuances involved with searching, and it is difficult to cover all of these. As an example, we know that not everyone is listed in the SSDI.  The SSDI is an index of all persons with Social Security Numbers that have been reported to the Social Security Administration.  These deaths are usually reported by a survivor requesting death benefits or to stop Social Security benefits to the decedent.  Because of this, when we are researching the patient, we look to see if they are married or if they have living children.  If so, and they died, almost certainly they would be listed in the SSDI.  If we see that a patient lived alone, was predeceased by their spouse and/or does not have living children, there is a greater likelihood that the patient is not listed in the SSDI.

Finally the greatest concern in determining patient vital status are very recent deaths which do not allow enough time for the data to appear in our databases and public records (i.e., an updated SSDI and obituaries and notices of death have not yet become available).  Because of this, we err on the side of caution and typically show the patient alive at a conservative earlier date.  We will also continue to rerun our database searches until we determine the vital status of the patient.

For those of you who are curious, OmniTrace may access many proprietary databases, public record resources and genealogical resources resources when we search for patients and determine vital status.  These include:

• Credit header information
• Employment records
• Telephone directory information
• Magazine, newspaper and book club subscriptions
• Motor vehicle and traffic accident records
• Driver’s License Records
• Cell phone users
• Boat owners
• Postal records
• UCC filings
• Corporate information
• Reverse directories
• Internet search engines
• Liens, judgments, civil and criminal records
• Pizza delivery listings
• Bankruptcy records
• Obituary notices
• Property records
• Census records
• State and national birth and death records
• Additional state and county specific databases

__________

Please share your thoughts regarding our post on Determining Clinical Trial Patient Vital Status.  And, please do email or call us with any questions you have about our OmniTrace Corp. patient search and patient retention services:

dave@omnitrace.com (Dave Betz)
888-965-6696