Peak Oil Task Force Report - City of Bloomington - State of Indiana

The Fourth Layer: Professional Care in Centralized Locations
The fourth layer of care in a restructured system would consist of what is often the first line
of medical attention today: the provision of services by professionals in a centralized
hospital or clinic. Hospitals will need to revise their equipment and organization to
respond to shortages of disposable supplies and pharmaceuticals (which derive from oil),
the inability of employees to commute as frequently, or as far, and even to the possibility of
regular power interruptions.
The Fifth Layer: Palliative, Nursing & Maintenance Care
A fifth layer of care, which exists today primarily in the hospice setting, would be an
expansion of palliative, nursing, or maintenance care for those individuals at the end of life
or whose conditions are either not responsive to medical intervention, or for whom the
choice of medical manipulation is unwelcome. It's quite within the realm of imagination
that proper medical care, even for patients whose conditions can heal, might lie in
providing supportive care and guidance outside either home or hospital, as in a spa or
sanitorium, where time and retraining in new personal health practices could result in the
reversal or remission of illness. 246
Some elements of this layered care system exist today, though arguably the first and most
important of these is the weakest, and is under constant assault by commercial interests. A
layered approach to health is most effective when all the elements in it are integrated and
mutually reinforcing. Regrettably, the current medical model is poorly equipped to suture
the layers of health together as conceived above. As citizens, as consumers of medical
services, and as individuals and families concerned with our own well‐being, we will have
to demand more holistic thinking from everyone about the sources and pathways to health.
With costs lowered by structural reorganization and new thinking, it might be possible to
implement community scale health coverage for all, regardless of what does or does not
come about from federal action.
246 Thanks to Dr. Jifunza Wright, M.D. of Chicago, Illinois for suggestions contributing to the new model of
care.
Report of the Bloomington Peak Oil Task Force 210