Assumptions
Introducing basic assumptions regarding the structure and theory of H2CM, with additional material on the benefits of information-communications technology and working styles.
There are a host of possible resources for
health assessment and evaluation of care needs and outcomes, tools for
specific problems and diagnoses. All these vie for the attention of
health care professionals and increasingly the multidisciplinary team
as a whole, for whom time is precious and priorities constantly
concentrate the mind.
The HCM is just one of many possible tools, and the majority seem
far more pertinent than the HCM. The passage of health and social
policy ensures dynamism and debate in assessments available, those
preferred (in research) and those deemed mandatory. UK mental health
services for example, face the gamut of National Service Frameworks,
National Programme for IT, clinical governance, minimum data sets,
Health of the Nation Outcome Scales (HoNOS), Care Programme Approach
and the Single Assessment Process for older adults.
Mental health services are affected at several levels: as organisations, departments, and individual practitioners. Relationships with other organisations also enter into the brief especially social services, voluntary and carer organisations. The UK is not exceptional in this respect. International visitors to this site will be able to list their own equivalents. Policy initiatives, research findings (which should both be 'joined-up') and the associated need to measure outcomes, lay their claim for adoption and routine use. They also impose demands for a slice of staff's (and more frequently now the patient's) time.
To survive, let alone develop and be applied globally, the HCM must prove its worth. It is in competition with many other potential models and tools. Exploration of the core assumptions behind HCM is essential as clinicians ask (quite rightly) why bother with the HCM? Why add the HCM to the clinician's (client's and carer's?) armamentarium?
Starting to investigate our assumptions
The links below begin the process of investigating assumptions that must underpin Hodges' model, and argue the case for the HCM's potential when allied with appropriate ICT. There is a circularity with questions whether you start with a 'how' or a 'why' question. There is probably no single answer to our 'why' question, but the answers entail a critique of assumptions that underpin the HCM. Currently, these assumptions cover:
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