Comprehensive Cardiovascular Risk Assessment Protocol

After selection of interview items, a pilot study was performed to test the instruments and logistics of data collection. Slight modifications were made before the main phase of RHESA-CARE started in January 2015. The CATI includes classical and psychosocial cardiovascular risk factors as well as factors of alerting behaviour, first aid, and utilization of medical and rehabilitation services. We use highly standardized and validated instruments of data collection which have been applied in several completed or ongoing studies to ensure qualitiy of data and comparability. Questionnaire items were selected and adapted from:

MONICA/KORA myocardial infarction registry (Cooperative Health Research in the Region of Augsburg) and it‘s postal questionnaire wave in 2011 (KORA-DMP) [19 (link), 21 , 22 (link)],

CARLA study (CARdiovascular disease, Living and Ageing in Halle) [23 (link)],

DIOS study (Diagnosis Optimisation Study) [24 (link)], and

IRENA (evaluation of the Intensified Rehabilitation Aftercare Program) [25 (link)].

For some special items we developed questions. Details on the sources of the questionnaire modules are listed in Table 3.
Table 3

Topics, sub-categories, and sources of the responder questionnaire used in RHESA-CARE

Topic	Sub-categories	Source
Cardiovascular disease	Previous MI, cardiac interventions	Adopted from CARLA
	symptomatic, situation while AMI, stroke, angina pectoris, dyspnoea, fluid retention, atrial fibrillation, blood pressure, cholesterol levels	Adopted from MONICA/KORA and KORA-DMP
	First aid	RHESA-CARE
Diabetes	Type of diabetes, intervention, blood sugar concentration, interval of measurement	Adopted from MONICA/KORA
Utilization of medical services	Consultation rates, medical assistance, patient education (blood pressure, diabetes, haemodilution), DMP programs	Adopted from MONICA/KORA and KORA-DMP
	family doctor	RHESA-CARE
Rehabilitation	Cardiac rehabilitation, heart training groups	RHESA-CARE
Life style	Smoking behaviour	Adopted from BGS98-Questionaire [27 ]
	BMI, physical activity	Adopted from MONICA/KORA
Medication	Medication before/after AMI, medication use	Adopted from MONICA/KORA, MMAS4 ([28 (link), 29 ]) also used in MONICA/KORA
Health condition	Health condition	EQ-5D-3L [30 ] also used in MONIKA/KORA
	Depression	GDS [31 (link), 32 (link)]
Care dependency	Care level before/after AMI, use of care service before/after AMI	Adopted from MONICA/KORA
Social status	Socio-economic and employment status	Adopted from CARLA, DIOS [33 ], and IRENA
	Health insurance	Adopted from MONICA/KORA

We used a non-responder questionnaire to identify possible structural differences between responder and non-responder. This questionnaire is a short version of the responder questionnaire and contains 15 items for cardiovascular disease, rehabilitation, body mass index (BMI), health condition, need for care, and social status. Furthermore, we prepared a questionnaire for the family doctor (FDQ). The FDQ contains the items: blood values, blood pressure, medication before/after AMI, and German disease management program (DMP) [18 (link)].