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Comprehensive cardiac rehabilitation (CR) is defined as: “The sum of activities required to ensure the best possible physical, mental and social conditions, so that the cardiac patient may resume as normal a place as possible in the life of the community.”1 This implies the use of an individually tailored combination of physiological, clinical, psychological and social methods. Measuring the outcome of a multifaceted intervention is a methodological and logistical challenge. At present quality assurance of CR is relatively uncommon even though guidelines recommend that data are routinely collected and presented.2 Thus, as CR programs must compete for resources with other healthcare modalities, caregivers will increasingly demand auditing of the service.

One of the main goals of a cardiac rehabilitation (CR) program is to support the patient in returning to work: strong economic and quality of life arguments exist. It has been stated that patients after an acute myocardial infarction (MI) without complications such as left ventricular dysfunction or exercise-induced myocardial ischemia may safely resume their previous work: for light office work 2 weeks of sickness absence are recommended, for average manual work 3 weeks, and for strenuous physical work 6 weeks. Thus, a majority of MI patients may well return to work (RTW) within the first month after discharge from hospital, as almost all industrial and other jobs require significantly less effort than the average maximum work capacity of a healthy population: only 25% is generally demanded for the modern workplace.