title: Strategies for guideline implementation in primary care focusing on patients with cardiovascular disease: a systematic review.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Guidelines should reduce inappropriate practice and improve the efficiency of treatment. Not only methodological quality but also acceptance and successful implementation in daily practice are crucial for the benefit on patients. Focusing on cardiovascular diseases (CVD), it is still unclear which implementation strategy can improve physician adherence to the recommendations of guidelines in primary care.
  
  
  METHODS
  We conducted a systematic review on randomized controlled trials about guideline implementation strategies on CVD. Medline, Embase, CENTRAL, conference proceedings and registers of ongoing studies were searched.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Eighty-four trials met our predefined inclusion criteria, of them 54 trials compared unimodal strategies and 30 multimodal strategies to usual care. Concerning unimodal strategies, 15 trials investigated provider reminder systems, 3 audit and feedback, 15 provider education, 4 patient education, 5 promotion of self-management and 14 organizational change. The strongest benefit of a unimodal implementation strategy was found due to organizational change (odds ratio 1.96; 95% CI 1.4 to 2.75), followed by patient education, provider education and provider reminder systems. Trials on the efficacy of audit and feedback and patient self-management showed differing results or small advantages in terms of physician adherence. Multimodal interventions showed almost similar effect measures and ranking of strategies.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The use of implementation strategies for the distribution of guidelines on CVD can be convincingly effective on physician adherence, regardless whether based on a unimodal or multimodal design. Three distinct strategies should be well considered in such an attempt: organizational changes in the primary care team, patient education and provider education.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Medical Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Informatics and susanne.unverzagt@medizin.uni-halle.de.
authors.forename: Susanne
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Unverzagt
authors.affiliation: Section of General Practice, Institute of Medical Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Informatics, University Halle/Wittenberg, Halle (Saale), Germany.
authors.forename: Matthias
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Oemler
authors.affiliation: Section of General Practice, Institute of Medical Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Informatics, University Halle/Wittenberg, Halle (Saale), Germany.
authors.forename: Kristin
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Braun
authors.affiliation: Section of General Practice, Institute of Medical Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Informatics, University Halle/Wittenberg, Halle (Saale), Germany.
authors.forename: Andreas
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Klement
mesh_terms: D002318:Cardiovascular Diseases / Q000628:therapy*; D019983:Guideline Adherence; D006801:Humans; D017410:Practice Guidelines as Topic; D011320:Primary Health Care / Q000379:methods*
keywords: Cardiovascular disease; guidelines; meta-analysis; physician adherence; primary care; systematic review.