CFSAC Recommendations - May 10, 2010

1. The Secretary should ask the blood community to defer indefinitely from donating any blood components, any person with a history of chronic fatigue syndrome.
2. The Secretary should recognize the special challenges of ensuring that CFS is part of any efforts to train or educate health care providers under health reform.
3. The Secretary should direct CMS, AHRQ, and HRSA to collaborate on developing a demonstration project focused on better value and more efficient and effective care for persons with CFS.  This can be a public-private effort, and monitoring outcomes and costs should be part of the overall evaluation.
4. The Secretary should ask the Designated Federal Officer to explore adding a web-based meeting to conduct CFSAC business.
5. CFSAC rejects proposals to classify CFS as a psychiatric condition in U.S. disease classification systems.  CFS is a multi-system disease and should be retained in its current classification structure, which is within the “Signs and Symptoms” chapter of the International Classification of Diseases 9-Clinical Modification (ICD 9-CM).*

*DFO Note:  The ICD 10-CM is scheduled for implementation on October 1, 2013.  In that classification, two mutually exclusive codes exist for chronic fatigue:

• post-viral fatigue syndrome (in the nervous system chapter), and
• chronic fatigue syndrome, unspecified (in the signs and symptoms chapter).

HHS has no plans at this time to change this classification in the ICD 10-CM.