Empire Health Services says its phasing out its clinical research department and will stop coordinating most research studies at Deaconess Medical Center, due to a decrease in the number of studies being conducted there over the last few years and a need to focus its financial resources on patient services.


Deaconess is continuing to coordinate the roughly half-dozen studies the department is handling, but now has just one full-time research coordinator, down from five full-time staff members about six months ago, says Robert Hartman, vice president for medical affairs at Empire Health.


The hospitals role in those studies has been to mark patients medical records to identify them as study participants, to ensure that medical care paid for by the studies sponsors wasnt billed to patients or their insurance companies, and to handle regulatory paperwork required for studies, Hartman says.


A number of physicians who formerly conducted research with the help of the hospitals research department have, over the past few years, shifted those studies to their own offices and have hired their own research coordinators, he says. Hartman says physicians often see an advantage in doing that with larger studies because they can make some profit.


That trend, he says, has left Deaconess with a dwindling number of studies and, consequently, a decreasing revenue stream to support the research department. As a result, most of the departments research staff members already had moved on to other opportunities. Hartman says those employees were heavily recruited by other local research entities and all resigned their positions during the last six months.


Although it wasnt Empires intent to have the research department be profitable, it had become more difficult to justify the expense of maintaining the department, which was formed in 2001, he says.


When studies started to dwindle, we were operating at a loss, Hartman says.


He says the planned biomedical research institute here, the Institute for Systems Medicine, likely would have reduced further the number of studies conducted at Deaconess.


We conceded to the inevitable, he says.


Sandra Allbritton, clinical research manager of Providence Medical Research Center, at Sacred Heart Medical Center & Childrens Hospital, says Providences research operation has experienced an increase in the number of studies conducted there. She says that though she has seen some physicians begin to coordinate studies through their own offices, she thinks its becoming more difficult for physicians to do that due to increasing regulatory requirements.


Empire Health Services has suffered financially in recent years and is in the process of being sold to Community Health Systems Inc., of Franklin, Tenn. The purchase price of Empire Healths assets recently was reduced to $156 million, about $16 million less than agreed on earlier in the proposed sale, in part due to poor financial performance in 2007, Empire Health says.


Hartman says Deaconess will continue to participate in clinical research studies, but not with a formal research department. Instead, it will have a single employee coordinate the studies, and other Deaconess staff members, including in the medical records and billings departments, will continue to be involved.


He asserts that although the doctors who have conducted research through Deaconess have understood why the department is being phased out, the decision has caused some inconvenience for them.


Dr. Lynn Kohlmeier, an endocrinologist with Spokane Osteoporosis Centers who has conducted research through Deaconess, says an upcoming clinical trial for which she currently is enrolling patients has been delayed several months due to Empire Healths decision to cut back on coordinating research. Kohlmeier, who says she has conducted osteoporosis research with the help of Deaconess research department since about 2001, recently moved her research to Sacred Heart Medical Centers research center.


In her upcoming study, the effects of a drug called Forteo, manufactured by Eli Lilly & Co., the Indianapolis-based pharmaceutical giant, will be compared with the effects of a drug called Fosamax, Kohlmeier says. Forteo is being tested for pain management and healing of fractures. Fosamax is widely used since it is now available generically, but is more useful in preventing fractures, she says.


Kohlmeier says she lobbied Deaconess to keep the research coordination department. She says she hasnt taken the path other physicians have in hiring their own research coordinators because she believes that collaborating with established facilities and research centers is beneficial for both patients and doctors.


Kohlmeier says her office typically has conducted about four studies a year through Deaconess. She says each of her studies typically enrolls between 20 and 100 patients here.


Contact Jeanne Gustafson at (509) 344-1264 or via e-mail at jeanneg@spokanejournal.com.