History of Services

For many years there has been little or no service provision for patients with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Typically patients were referred to a varying range of hospital specialists in an ad-hoc way, which often resulted in patients being disillusioned and receiving little or no treatment options.

This lack of specialist service provision was recognised by the Government and in 1998 the Chief Medical Officer (CMO) announced the establishment of a Working Group to consider how the NHS might best provide care for people of all ages who have this syndrome. The Working Group was asked to commission a report.

Their brief was:

"To Review the management and practice in the field of CFS/ME with the aim of providing best practice guidance for professionals, patients and carers to improve the quality of care and treatment for people with CFS/ME, in particular to:

· develop good clinical practice guidance on the healthcare management of CFS/ME

for NHS professionals, using best available evidence

· make recommendations for further research into the care and treatment of

people with CFS/ME

· identify areas which might require further work and make recommendations

to the CMO

The report was published in January 2002.

During 2004 - 2006, as a result of this report, a central investment budget of £8.5 million was released to support a Service Investment Programme, in an attempt to address the service gaps across England. Nationally, 13 Clinical Network Co-ordinating Centres were established, 36 specialist multi-disciplinary services and 11 specialist multi-disciplinary paediatric teams.

65% of the population of England is now covered by the new CFS/ME services.

The investment programme came to an end in April 2006 and continuation of the local services as well as development of new services is subject to mainstream local commissioning, supported by the Clinical Network Co-ordinating Centres.

For the East Midlands Network, the funded teams are in Derbyshire, Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire and have been in operation since 2004/2005. There is also an established service in Leicestershire which has been seeing CFS patients for many years, but unfortunately did not receive additional funding from the investment programme.

The National Institute for Health & Clinical Excellence (NICE) will be producing clinical guidance on the management of CFS. Draft guidance was released in September 2006, with the final version expected in August 2007.

More information about each of the clinical teams and the East Midlands CFS Clinical Network can be obtained by following the links or the menu on the left.