Evidence-Based Health Information in Family Medicine Practices Results from the EVI Pilot Project (Evidence-Based Health Information)

Background According to the European Health Literacy Survey, Austrians have low health literacy. We know that a large part of the health information stored in Styrian family medicine practices is of questionable quality. Aim of the EVI project was to identify evidence-based health information for common consultations in family medicine and to assess their quality. We collected health information with the highest quality rating and made them available to family medicine practices in Styria in form of a brochure stand (so-called EVI box) to support health related decisions. Methods Focused research to identify common reasons for treatment in family practice and priorization through an online survey. According to these results we searched for German-language evidence-based health information. The starting point for the search was the links to health information for interested layper-sons on the website of Cochrane Germany, supplemented by expert queries and a Google search. After assessing quality with the Ensuring Quality Information for Patients Instrument (EQIP), we ranked the health information according to the EQIP score they achieved and integrated the health information with the highest EQIP score into the EVI box for each consultation. Results Out of 360 family physicians contacted, 69 family physicians (22 %) prioritized the 55 most common reasons for treatment, using the first 10 as the basis for the search for health in-formation. The selection of the search results resulted in 69 health information for nine different, thematically summarized treatment events, which we used for the quality assessment. Finally, 14 health information were included in the EVI box for the following treatment events: dizziness (1), back pain (2), joint pain (5), diabetes mellitus (1), sleep disorders (1), depress-ion/burnout (1), headache (1), chronic wounds (1), memory disorders (1). The health information included in the EVI box achieved a mean EQIP score of 0.79 (range: 0.75–0.86). Conclusions The EVI box is the first collection of 14 quality-assessed, evi-dence-based health information documents for ten consultations available in Austria for use in family medicine practices. © Deutscher Ärzteverlag |.