The Scoop on Medicare Clinical Trials—For Those Who Care About Their Health

The popularity of clinical trials is growing by the day, and there is a good reason behind that. These medical studies ensure scientific progress and help develop new treatments for various conditions. If you have Medicare health insurance, you can benefit from certain clinical trials this organization supports.

What Is Medicare’s Clinical Trial Policy?

Medicare is federal health insurance for people who are 65 and older, younger persons with disabilities, and people with End-Stage Renal Disease (ESRD).

Medicare’s clinical research policy states that principal investigators and sponsors must prove to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) that the clinical trial they are conducting is in accordance with technical and scientific standards the policy requires. 


Medicare also states that it will cover the routine costs of qualifying clinical trials as well as costs caused by possible complications from participating in medical surveys.

A clinical trial will be covered by Medicare if:

  1. The purpose of the trial falls in the Medicare benefit category (diagnostic test, physicians’ service, and durable medical equipment)
  2. The trial has a therapeutic intent. If a study tests toxicity or disease pathophysiology, Medicare won’t cover the expenses
  3. The trial must accept patients with a certain disease and not healthy volunteers
  4. The clinical study is not copying existing studies
  5. The study aims to improve the participant’s health
  6. The sponsor of the study is a reputable organization
  7. The study is conducted according to federal regulations regarding the protection of human subjects

What Are Medicare Approved Clinical Trials?

The principal investigator (PI) of a clinical trial must certify that the clinical study being conducted meets all the required qualifying criteria to be covered by Medicare. The PI will need to add the clinical trial to the Medicare clinical trials registry that is still under development.

Medicare automatically approves certain clinical trials if the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) declares them suitable.

The List of Medicare Approved Clinical Trials

Medicare approves clinical studies if they are:

  1. Sponsored by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), the Department of Defense (DOD), and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA)
  2. Supported by centers or cooperative groups sponsored by the VA, DOD, CMS, CDC, NIH, or AHRQ
  3. Testing drugs that are free from having an IND under 21 CFR 312.2(b)(1)

If the CMS’s Chief Clinical Officer finds that a clinical trial does not meet all the required criteria, Medicare won’t cover the clinical trial costs.

Medicare and Clinical Trials—Why Should You Participate?

Clinical trials are conducted to ensure that new and efficient treatments are safe and beneficial for patients. Participating in clinical trials is of paramount importance because it allows new cures to pass the safety procedures, known as clinical trial phases, and to become available to the general population.

Researchers of some interventional studies look for healthy volunteers, but others need patients whose health is affected by a specific disease or a condition. Sometimes the participants get paid for taking part in medical studies, but that is not a general rule. It is useful to have health insurance that can take care of the costs, and Medicare is a good example.

There is a list of strict requirements a clinical trial has to meet to qualify for Medicare reimbursement.

What Are the Benefits and Risks of Participating in a Medicare Clinical Trial?

Medicare only approves clinical studies funded by reliable federal organizations, and that means you can feel safer since you are in the hands of reputable institutions. All medical studies come with risks and benefits, so let’s take a look at the pros and cons in the table below:

Benefits Risks
  • Receiving specialized healthcare
  • Monitoring your health condition closely and noticing side effects quickly
  • Getting access to new treatments and drugs
  • Being an important part of medical research that can help others struggling with the same disease
  • Taking drugs or getting treatments that are less effective than the standard ones
  • Experiencing side effects no one new could appear
  • Ending up in a placebo group and not benefiting from the treatment
  • Spending a lot of your time on treatments and trips to the research facility

DoNotPay Can Help You Find Medicare Coverage Clinical Trials

DoNotPay is the fastest way of finding clinical trials covered by Medicare. You don’t have to waste your precious time looking for clinical studies by googling ‘clinical trials near me’ and deciding on what website to visit. To be done with the process in a heartbeat, do the following:

  1. Access DoNotPay from your web browser
  2. Log in and click on Clinical Trials
  3. Click on Get Started
  4. Set up the filters
  5. Pick a study you’d like to be a part of
  6. Hit the Contact button

We will send an email to the research team to speed up the whole process. You can expect a response within several days after completing the questionnaire Contact as many studies as you like from our extensive database, which includes clinical trials, university psych studies, and paid research surveys. You can rest assured you’ll find something meeting your requirements.

If you want to ensure a spot in a new study and be the first in line, you can turn on our real-time notification feature. DoNotPay is the only platform that allows users to look for studies based on estimated distance, safety, compensation, and date/time posted.

If you find a study that perfectly matches all your requirements but is not accepting participants yet, don’t stress—you can save it for later with our bookmarking feature! This option is also useful when you are ready to be a part of the study but would like to join it in the future.

Other Benefits That Come With Using DoNotPay

DoNotPay cares about its users’ health, and that’s why we have created the fastest way to search for clinical trials.

If you want to look for clinical trials on the West Coast, we can help you find the best ones in San Diego or Los Angeles. In case you live on the East Coast and want to stay close to home, we can tell you where to look for the clinical trials in Miami, Boston, or Philadelphia.

Perhaps you think Texas is big enough to find a suitable clinical study? We can help you find the right match in cities like Dallas, Houston, or Austin.

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In case Health Hotline or Top Health robocalls are not leaving you alone, we can help you report them.

Open DoNotPay in your web browser, and we’ll assist you with the following issues: