Advancing Preparedness for Life Support Users During Power Outages

For the average person, power outages are inconvenient. For the growing number of people who depend on life support devices and other electric-powered medical equipment in their homes, even short-term outages can become a matter of life and death, especially when outages occur with little warning.

The increased frequency and duration of power outages caused by natural disasters, documented in a Climate Central report, compounds the challenges faced by medical device users. In California, utilities implement intentional public safety power shutoffs (PSPS) to minimize the risk of wildfires sparked by utility lines. According to the California Public Utilities Commission, 78 PSPS events  occurred between 2019 and 2022 in California.

Absent a reliable source of backup power, many people who depend on life support and other types of durable medical equipment (DME) rely on hospital emergency departments or emergency shelters during an outage, simply seeking a place to plug in their device. Power outages triggered by Hurricane Sandy in 2012 sent hundreds of DME users to hospital emergency departments to plug in their devices. The 2021 Texas power grid failure triggered more than 50 calls over a two-day period to an ambulance provider from patients with life-sustaining medical devices and no power.

The increased number of power outages requires new solutions to minimize risk to medical device users and reduce drain on hospitals, ambulance providers, and shelters during emergencies. This report provides a roadmap for how jurisidictions can improve their support for DME users during power outages, ranging from modest but beneficial actions to more resource-intensive programs like Louisiana’s Power Outage Partners pilot. The more jurisdictions undertake this important work, the more much needed progress the country can make in boosting support for people using life support and DME devices during power outages.