Hansen, Anne Helen, Lian, Olaug S · BMJ open · 2016 · DOI
This study asked 431 Norwegian women with ME/CFS to rate how satisfied they were with their healthcare. Most women (about 60%) said their primary care doctors provided poor quality care, while slightly fewer (about 48%) rated specialist care as poor. Nearly 3 out of 4 women felt that different healthcare services weren't well coordinated with each other. Women who felt sicker overall and those with more severe ME/CFS symptoms were more likely to report poor care quality.
This study documents significant dissatisfaction with healthcare services among women with ME/CFS, highlighting a critical gap in care quality and coordination. These findings underscore the need for healthcare system improvements and better provider education regarding ME/CFS management. For patients, this validates common experiences of inadequate care; for researchers and clinicians, it identifies specific areas—particularly care coordination—requiring urgent intervention.
This study cannot establish causation—it only shows associations between health perceptions and care ratings. The findings reflect subjective patient experiences rather than objective measures of actual care quality, and results may not generalize beyond Norwegian women members of a patient association. The cross-sectional design cannot determine whether poor care quality causes worse health outcomes or vice versa.
About the PEM badge: “PEM required” means post-exertional malaise was an explicit required diagnostic criterion for participant inclusion in this study — not that PEM was studied, observed, or discussed. Studies using criteria that do not require PEM (e.g. Fukuda, Oxford) are tagged “PEM not required”. How the atlas works →
The first block is for the primary paper and is the citation you should use in research work. The atlas-snapshot line only applies if you are specifically referring to this atlas’s reading of the paper on the date shown.
Primary citation
Hansen, Anne Helen & Lian, Olaug S (2016). How do women with chronic fatigue syndrome/myalgic encephalomyelitis rate quality and coordination of healthcare services? A cross-sectional study.. BMJ open. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2015-010277
BibTeX
@article{mecfsatlas-hansen-2016-how-women,
author = {Hansen, Anne Helen and Lian, Olaug S},
title = {How do women with chronic fatigue syndrome/myalgic encephalomyelitis rate quality and coordination of healthcare services? A cross-sectional study.},
journal = {BMJ open},
year = {2016},
doi = {10.1136/bmjopen-2015-010277},
note = {PubMed: 27044578},
url = {https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/hansen-2016-how-women},
}Atlas snapshot reference
ME/CFS Atlas. Generator v1 / Scanner v1.4 / policy v0.1. Accessed 2026-05-29. https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/hansen-2016-how-women
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