Inefficacy of different strategies to improve guideline awareness – 5-year follow-up of the hypertension evaluation project (HEP)

Background In spite of numerous guidelines for evidence based diagnostic and therapy adequate knowledge of current recommendations is disappointingly low. In the Hypertension Evaluation Project (HEP I) we showed that awareness of national hypertension guidelines under German practitioners was less than 25% in the year 2000. This indicates the need for efficient strategies to relevantly improve guideline awareness.