Why have feasibility requests dried up at my site?

Fewer feasibility questionnaires are arriving, and the ones that do often don't fit your site. Some are for complex protocols, such as rare-disease, narrow biomarker or procedure-heavy studies, that your patients may never match. Often nothing changed at your site. The invitations did.

If that sounds familiar, waiting for the inbox to recover may not be the answer. A better use of the time is finding studies that fit your site yourself, from public signals, before feasibility opens, and holding anyone who offers to help to a simple measure: how many studies that fit your site did they actually bring?

Why the invitations change

A change in invitation volume doesn't tell you its cause, and your site can't see inside a sponsor's site-selection process. Treat these as possibilities to check, not a diagnosis:

• Sponsors and CROs often go back to sites they know. A site that has already delivered for a sponsor is an easier choice than one it has never worked with. If your past sponsors have fewer studies in your areas right now, fewer invitations reach you.
• Site databases can shape who gets asked. Feasibility lists are often pulled from CRO site databases and shared investigator platforms. If your profile there is thin or out of date, you may be filtered out before a person ever sees your site.
• Hard-to-fill studies may go out wider. When a sponsor struggles to find enough sites for a complex protocol, it may send the questionnaire to more sites, including ones it doesn't know well.
• Public listings can lag behind site selection. Many sites may already be chosen before a study appears on ClinicalTrials.gov. US rules allow some trials to register after the first participant enrolls, and some early-stage studies don't have to register at all.

None of this says your site is weaker. It says the usual ways of being found may not be reaching you, and it's worth looking for studies more actively.

Before you write off the complex studies

A complex or narrow protocol isn't automatically wrong for you. Before you decline, check it the same way you'd check any study: does it fit your PI's experience, do you have the procedures and equipment, can you support a realistic enrollment estimate from a permitted, de-identified review of your own records, and would the budget cover the work? Our go/no-go budget check walks through the money side.

If it doesn't fit, decline cleanly and say which therapeutic areas you do want. A short, specific decline tells the sender what to send next time.

Where to look before feasibility opens

Public information can point to upcoming studies or to ongoing studies that may be expanding. None of it confirms that feasibility or site selection is still open, and some signals are noisy, but each one is a reason to look closer. Even though listings can lag, a new registration with a short location list is still worth checking.

• New registrations that aren't recruiting yet, or have few sites listed. A study marked "not yet recruiting" with a short location list may still be choosing sites.
• Growing site lists. A sponsor that keeps adding locations may still be looking, though new locations often reflect sites chosen earlier.
• Completion dates that keep moving later. This can mean enrollment is slower than planned and the sponsor may need more sites. It can also mean other problems, so confirm before you invest time.
• Sponsor pipelines. Company websites, investor presentations and press releases often name the next study in a program and the phase it's heading into.
• Positive Phase 2 results. Good Phase 2 results often lead to a larger study, which may need more sites.
• Funding announcements and SEC filings. Look for stated clinical development plans, then check whether any announced study needs sites.
• Hiring. When a sponsor posts clinical operations roles, that can come well before a public listing.

Pick the signals that match your therapeutic areas and check them on a regular schedule. Keep a simple log: the study or program, the signal you saw, the date, and who you contacted.

Turning a signal into a conversation

A signal is only useful if it leads to the right person at the right time:

• Check fit first. Run the study or program against your PI, procedures, patient access and capacity before you write to anyone. Writing about a study you can't enroll wastes your credibility.
• Find out who runs feasibility. For some studies it's the sponsor's clinical operations team; for others a CRO manages it, and the sponsor may still approve the final list.
• Write a short, specific note. Name the study or program, say briefly why your site fits, and offer aggregate patient estimates, never patient information.
• Ask directly whether sites are still being added. Only the sponsor or CRO can confirm that.
• Register where they tell you to. If the answer is a portal or a CRO database, fill in every field and keep it current.

We wrote more about what sponsor replies mean in why sponsors don't answer your site's interest emails.

How to judge help with finding studies

If you don't have the time to watch signals yourself, you may look at a site network, a study-search platform, a consultant or a service like ours. Whatever you choose, judge it by the studies it brings that fit your site, not by how many questionnaires or introductions it produces. A long questionnaire for a study you could never enroll costs coordinator time and gives you nothing back.

Ask any provider what it counts as a success, how it decides what to send you, which early signals it watches, and whether you can see a log of every contact made on your behalf. We go through these questions in more detail in judging a study-search vendor: count enrollable studies, not feasibility questionnaires.

Also ask how it gets paid. A retainer pays the provider whether or not a fitting study ever arrives. A fee that is payable only when a qualified opportunity reaches you can line up the provider's interest with yours, as long as "qualified" is defined in writing.

Where Shortlisted™ fits

This is the problem we built Shortlisted™ to work on. Our Trial Radar watches the earlier signals that a study may need sites, such as growing site lists, pushed-out completion dates, funding rounds and positive Phase 2 results, and checks each one against what your site can really do before we bring it to you. It is the only service we know of that works this way for independent sites. A signal is a reason to look closer, not proof that a sponsor needs more sites.

Shortlisted™ is paid only by sites, never by sponsors or CROs. There is no setup fee and no monthly retainer; a fixed fee becomes payable only when a qualified feasibility arrives, and it is never tied to enrollment, patient numbers or study budgets. We don't refer patients or guarantee a place in any study, and we can't promise that any sponsor will select your site.

Want to see how your site looks to sponsors today? Start with a free Sponsor-Ready Audit.

The short version

When feasibility invitations slow down or stop fitting, waiting may not bring the old volume back. Check whether the complex ones fit, keep your database profiles current, and look for fitting studies in public signals before feasibility opens. If you get help, judge it by the fitting studies it actually brings.

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