Power Outages Are Getting Longer.

Your Medication Plan Hasn’t Caught Up.

By Cayla McGrath

Most households’ mental model for a power outage goes something like this: the lights go out, the fridge holds for a few hours, the power comes back before anything important happens.

That mental model was built for a different era of outages.

Across the West, utilities have been quietly changing how they handle faults on the grid. In wildfire-prone areas, automatic reclosers that used to snap a line back on within seconds have been disabled. The logic is sound: re-energizing a line into dry brush is exactly how a small fault becomes a fire. So when a line goes down, a crew has to physically drive out, inspect the circuit, and clear it before power is restored. What used to be a three-second blip becomes a half-day outage. A real fault becomes days. Xcel’s shutoffs on the Colorado Front Range in December 2025 lasted days, not hours. Storms and grid strain are producing the same result in places that have never heard the term Red Flag.

For most households, a longer outage is an inconvenience. For a household where someone is managing temperature-sensitive medications, home oxygen, or a CPAP machine, the gap between “a few hours” and “a few days” is the gap between fine and a real problem. And that gap is quietly widening.

Here’s what every household should have in place before the next one.

Ask your pharmacist one specific question — and write down the answer

The most common piece of advice about medications and power outages is “keep them refrigerated.” That’s not actually useful guidance when the power is out.

The useful question is: how long is my specific medication safe at room temperature? Ask your pharmacist and write down the answer — it’s product-specific. The FDA guidance for insulin is that open vials and cartridges can be kept at room temperature — defined as 59–86°F — for up to 28 days for most products. But that assumes room temperature, not a house that’s warming up in July. And a pump reservoir, because insulin is exposed to body heat, has a much shorter window — typically around 48 hours. These numbers are product-specific and won’t show up in a general preparedness article. Your pharmacist has them.

The other thing to know: never freeze insulin. Freezing degrades insulin permanently and a vial that’s been frozen looks completely normal — there’s no visible change.

If someone in your household depends on a powered medical device, this conversation cannot wait

Home oxygen concentrators, ventilators, CPAP and BiPAP machines all run on electricity, and “the power is out” is not an acceptable answer if the device is life-sustaining.

If someone in your household depends on any of these devices, contact your equipment supplier before the next outage — not during it. Most home medical equipment suppliers have emergency backup plans that customers can set up in advance: backup battery systems, non-electric alternatives for oxygen, documentation for priority utility restoration. These plans require paperwork and sometimes lead time. A Sunday night outage is not when to find out they exist.

Enroll in your utility’s medical-baseline program

Your utility company almost certainly has a medical-baseline program that qualifies households with electricity-dependent medical needs for lower rates, priority notification during planned outages, and in some cases priority restoration. Enrollment requires a clinician to sign a form certifying the medical need. It takes a few minutes to request, and once it’s done, it’s in place for every outage that follows.

The HHS emPOWER program maintains a public database of electricity-dependent Medicare beneficiaries — over 4.6 million households across the US — and uses it to coordinate emergency response when outages happen at scale. Your local utility program is the household-level equivalent.

Keep a buffer supply and a written medication list

A 7-to-30-day supply of critical medications means that a several-day outage doesn’t immediately become a medication crisis. A written list — drug name, dose, prescriber, pharmacy — means that if you need emergency dispensing, you have the documentation to make it work. During a declared emergency, pharmacists in most states can dispense Schedule III through V medications without a new prescription, typically up to 30 days. That authority exists and pharmacists use it — but it requires documentation. For up to a 12-month supply of your chronic daily medication, check out JaseDaily. 

Where the JaseCase fits

The JaseCase is not a refrigerator substitute. What it covers is the second problem that can develop during a prolonged disruption: the acute infection that starts when healthcare access is interrupted. A UTI on day three of an outage. An ear infection when the pediatrician’s office isn’t taking same-day calls. A skin infection that needs treatment before it spreads.

The JaseCase is the contingency layer for those moments — a physician-prescribed, guidebook-supported supply of antibiotics for defined, common conditions, with Jase telehealth as the backstop when your regular provider isn’t reachable.

Learn more at jase.com/

Cayla McGrath is a content strategist with Jase Medical. This post is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. Always consult a licensed healthcare provider before using any prescription medication.