Health Professional Referrals
Your patients don't have to navigate ME/CFS, Long COVID, Fibromyalgia and Dysautonomia alone — and neither do you.
CCI Support is Aotearoa's largest dedicated social support service for people with complex chronic illness. When you diagnose early and manage well, we do the rest — pacing education, symptom support, advocacy, and whānau support — so your patients stay well for the long term.
When you complete the referral form, an email will be immediately sent to your patient to connect with us. Please ask them to check their spam, if it isn’t in their inbox.
Please note: We are currently experiencing delays with shipping printed resources. Your order will be processed as soon as possible.
Early recognition and the right early advice change outcomes.
They:
- Shorten the diagnostic delay that currently leaves many patients undiagnosed for years
- Prevent deterioration by avoiding activity that triggers post-exertional malaise (PEM)
- Help patients stay in work, study, and independent living for longer
- Reduce avoidable hospitalisation and acute presentations
- Support patients and whānau at the point they need it most — early, not in crisis
What we offer your patients
Education and orientation — plain-language information on their condition, what to expect, and where to start
Pacing support — the single most protective skill for PEM, taught practically and reinforced over time
Symptom and pain management resources — including printable tracking tools patients can bring back to you
Counselling – for dealing with the emotions that arise from having a complex chronic medical condition
Nervous system regulation, sleep, and nutrition guidance — evidence-based, reviewed against current research
Low-level advocacy — help navigating MSD, WINZ, NASC, and disability entitlements
Peer connection and whānau support — so patients and the people caring for them aren’t isolated
The Towards Wellness Programme — our structured, evidence-informed group programme for building stability and self-management skills
We support the full whānau, not just the patient — because in complex chronic illness, the family often carries as much load as the person who’s unwell.
CCI Support does not recommend Graded Exercise Therapy (GET) or Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) as primary treatments for ME/CFS or Long COVID. This isn’t a preference — it reflects the current evidence base and international best practice.
For decades, GET and CBT were promoted on the premise that ME/CFS was a disorder of deconditioning or perception. That premise has not held up. What was previously read as “avoidance” or “deconditioning” is now understood as post-exertional malaise (PEM) — a physiological worsening of symptoms after exertion, often delayed 24–72 hours, and a defining diagnostic feature of the illness. Encouraging patients to push through it can cause lasting harm and relapse.
What we recommend instead: individualised pacing, symptom-led activity management, and treatment of comorbidities and contraindications — approaches covered in the clinical resources below.
What your patient may need from you
-
- A diagnosis
- Co-morbidities treated – known links – MCAS, Fibromyalgia, Neurodivergence and other overlapping “neuroimmune” or autonomic clusters
- A referral to NASC for home help
- Specialist referrals to sleep specialist, local pain clinic, rheumatologist for Fibromyalgia etc
- Disability Allowance to cover their extra costs
- They may benefit from being on Support Living Payments instead of a Job Seekers benefit
- MSD Code – SLP F286
- Please make sure that the terminiology expresses to MSD the limitations of your patients Funcational Capacity and how it affects their day to day life.
- A pamphlet from CCI Support, explaining how they can access our services
How to refer
1.
Complete form
2.
We contact them
3.
Ongoing Support
Dianostic and Clinical Resources
ME/CFS
Diagnostic criteria (IOM 2015) require
- Post-exertional malaise (PEM), which is an abnormal response to physical or cognitive exertion,
- A substantial reduction or impairment in the ability to engage in pre-illness levels of activity (accompanied by fatigue),
- Unrefreshing sleep, and
- Cognitive impairment and/or orthostatic intolerance
Dysautnomia
How to diagnose PoTS
- Diagnostic Criteria – Sustained increase in heart rate of 30 beats per minute (40bpm in teenagers) from lying to standing associated with symptoms of PoTS
- NASA Lean Test – rest supine and record HR and BP. After 5-10 mins stand straight leaning against wall in a safe place and record BP and HR every minute for 10 minutes
- Investigations – ECG. Exclude anaemia, hyperthyroidism, postural hypotension, phaeochromocytoma
Fibromyalgia
Three main criteria need to be met for a diagnosis:
- The score on the Widespread Pain Index (WPI) is 7 or higher, and Symptom Severity Score (SSS) is 5 or higher. Or the WPI is between 3 to 6 and SSS is 9 or higher.
- Symptoms have been present at a similar level for at least three months.
- There is no other disorder that would otherwise explain the pain.
Long COVID
Post COVID-19 condition occurs in individuals with a history of probable or confirmed SARS- CoV-2 infection, usually 3 months from the onset of COVID-19 with symptoms that last for at least 2 months and cannot be explained by an alternative diagnosis.
CME & Professional Education
Earn CME credits while you learn. ANZMES is an RNZCGP-registered provider of continuing education.
- Know M.E. — ANZMES’s video podcast and news series on current ME/CFS and post-COVID research → [Subscribe]
- ANZMES Clinical Resources → [Check them out here]
- From Harm to Help — Dr Cathy Stephenson’s presentation to the RNZCGP General Practice Conference, produced with M.E. Awareness NZ → [Watch]
- NZ Doctor “How to Treat” — ME/CFS (2020) — 1 RNZCGP credit
- Physios for ME – a seven-slide primer for Physiotherapists
CCI Support has stood alongside people with complex chronic illness in Aotearoa since 1981. We’re a registered charity (CC20874), our only interest is that the person in front of you gets support that helps them get well, or stay as well as possible, for the long term.
We know you don’t have the time or capacity to hold everything a complex chronic illness patient needs. That’s exactly the gap we exist to fill — for your patient, and for the whānau supporting them.
Medical Research
As an agency, we like to keep up to date with the research going on around the world. Here are some articles of interest.
New Zealand Research: Why Does ME/CFS and Long COVID Cause Relapses?
A team of New Zealand researchers (University of Otago, in a paper supported by ANZMES) has published a theory paper in 2022 looking at why ME/CFS and Long COVID symptoms persist long-term and why relapses happen — even from small, everyday stresses. It's a...
Nutrition and Long Covid – By Tania
What the research says: Diet and Long COVID Long COVID affects an estimated 400 million people worldwide. Common symptoms include fatigue, brain fog, breathing problems, gut issues, and reduced quality of life. There's no cure yet, so treatment focuses on managing...
Which exercise is most beneficial for treating women with fibromyalgia? A systematic review and network meta-analysis
A systematic review and network meta-analysis means that they did not perform any new research. Instead, they found previous studies done on this topic and compiled them and compared them to answer their question. They found that in the short-term, Pilates, Aquatic...
Otago: Chronic illness linked to hardship – study
New NZ research shows what many of you already know: ME/CFS and hardship go hand in hand A University of Otago-led study, published in BMC Public Health in May 2026, is the first in New Zealand to use linked national data to look at how people with ME/CFS are faring...
Development and validation of blood-baseddiagnostic biomarkers for MyalgicEncephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome(ME/CFS) using EpiSwitch® 3-dimensionalgenomic regulatory immuno-genetic profiling
Medical research is entering an exciting period, with new and creative ways to detect disease. One recent study gained attention for using advanced three-dimensional genomic profiling to investigate ME/CFS. The study focuses on epigenetics, which examines how gene...
The Genetic Architecture of Fibromyalgia Across 2.5 Million Individuals
This study aimed to identify fibromyalgia genetic risk factors through a combined genetic analysis of over 2.5 million individuals. They had 54,629 fibromyalgia cases and 2,509,126 controls (people without fibromyalgia, used for comparison). They Found: · 26...
The Prospects of the Two-Day Cardiopulmonary Exercise Test (CPET) in ME/CFS Patients: A Meta-Analysis
Published in Diagnostics (January 2025), this meta-analysis crunches data from 15 studies (over 200 ME/CFS patients vs. controls) to dissect how PEM hijacks your energy systems during exercise provocation. Led by researchers from the Open Medicine Foundation and...
Uncovering the Molecular Basis of Long COVID Brain Fog
Researchers at Yokohama City University have made a significant breakthrough in understanding the biological basis of cognitive impairment—commonly known as “brain fog”—associated with Long COVID. Although Long COVID’s lasting symptoms affect millions globally and...
Growing Recognition of Post-Acute Infection Syndromes
The article posits that a broader clinical and research framework — post-acute infection syndromes (PAISs) — is increasingly needed to understand a range of chronic illnesses that can follow acute infections. PAISs include conditions such as long COVID and myalgic...
Can a New Blood Test Actually Detect ME/CFS? Here’s What We Know
Scientists in the UK have reported developing what may be the first blood test capable of diagnosing myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) with about 96% accuracy, sparking hope for patients who often wait years for a clinical diagnosis based on...
Let’s talk
If you’d like to learn more about any of our services, or get involved, we’d love to hear from you.
