Plan your medications with your care team

Medication is the prep most likely to matter and most often overlooked. If anyone in your household takes a daily prescription — for blood pressure, diabetes, thyroid, mental health, seizures, or anything else — a disruption that closes the pharmacy or the supply chain is a direct threat. Planning medication continuity isn't hoarding; it's a conversation with your doctor and a small backup that keeps you safe. This page covers the conversation to have, the backup to build, and the storage and power considerations for medications that need more than a pill bottle.

Talk to your clinician first

The first step is a conversation, not a stockpile. Ask your prescribing clinician how to build a short medication backup safely — they may be able to authorize an early refill or a 7-to-14-day reserve for the prescriptions that matter most. Insurance and pharmacy rules vary, so ask what's allowed; some plans permit an emergency vacation override. Your doctor knows your situation; this page can't and won't tell you what to take.

For refrigerated medications like insulin or some biologics, plan for a power failure specifically. Know the storage temperature range, how long the medication stays good at room temperature, and have a plan for keeping it cold: a cooler with ice, a neighbor's fridge, or a small backup power source for a mini-fridge. Insulin manufacturers publish guidance on storage; follow it, not a guess. The FDA has drug-storage guidance that's worth reading.

Write down the full medication list — drug, dose, schedule, prescribing doctor, and pharmacy — for each household member on medications. Keep a copy in your go-bag and your emergency documents. In a crisis, you won't remember the exact milligrams, and the pharmacist who refills it won't either. The list is the plan; the bottles are the supply. Both matter.

Ask about alternatives. If your usual pharmacy is closed, where else can you fill? If your medication is a specialty drug with limited availability, what's the backup? For a 30-day supply of a common drug, a chain pharmacy is fine; for a specialty drug, the backup may be a mail-order or a specific specialty pharmacy. Know the chain, not just the one you use.

Plan for the people who can't advocate for themselves. A child, a senior with cognitive issues, or anyone who can't articulate their own medication list needs the list carried for them. If you're not there, who knows the list? A second household member, a neighbor, a card in the wallet — the list has to be reachable by more than one person. The plan fails if the one person who knows it is the one who's hurt.

Store and rotate medications safely

Store medications where the label says — usually room temperature, dry, and out of direct sun. A bathroom medicine cabinet in a steamy bathroom is often the worst spot. Heat and humidity degrade many drugs faster than people expect. Keep the backup supply in its original containers with the labels intact, and rotate it: when you refill, use the older stock and keep the newer as the reserve. The FDA is explicit on storage; read the label.

Don't let a backup expire unrotated. A 90-day reserve sounds great until you find it three years out of date during an outage. Build a rotation habit: each refill, swap the oldest forward. Check expiration dates on your maintenance schedule. An expired medication is not a backup; it's a liability — some drugs become less effective, and a few become unsafe.

Keep over-the-counter basics alongside the plan: the pain reliever your household uses, antacids, any antihistamine for allergies, and rehydration solution for a stomach bug. These are cheap, and a sick household member during an outage is a bad time to be out of them. Stock the ones your household actually uses, not the generic checklist.

Keep the medications where you can find them in the dark and where you can grab them fast. A go-bag has a week of meds; the emergency documents have the list. If you have to leave in 10 minutes, the meds and the list go with you. A medication plan that lives in the bathroom cabinet and not in the go-bag is a plan that fails in an evacuation.

Disposal matters too. Expired or unused medications should be disposed of properly — not flushed, not in the trash. The FDA and DEA have take-back programs; many pharmacies take them back. A stockpile of expired drugs in the house is a risk, not a prep. Rotate out what's expired and dispose of it the right way.

Plan for the medicine that needs more than a pill

Some medical needs don't fit in a bottle. If a household member uses oxygen, has a feeding tube, needs dialysis, or relies on powered medical equipment, your preparedness plan has to address power and transport specifically. Talk to the care team and the equipment supplier about backup power and emergency procedures. Many utility companies keep a 'life-support equipment' registry that prioritizes restoring power to your address — enroll if you qualify.

For anyone with severe allergies, keep an unexpired epinephrine auto-injector accessible and make sure more than one person in the household knows how and when to use it. For asthma, keep rescue inhalers current and know your nebulizer's power needs. These aren't optional 'extras' for those households — they're the core of the plan. The power plan and the medication plan overlap here; the power basics page covers the power side.

For dialysis, the plan is specific and urgent. Know your alternate dialysis facility, how you'd get there, and what the unit's emergency plan is. Dialysis can't be improvised; it's a schedule that has to continue. Talk to your care team about the plan for a disruption that affects your usual facility. This is the prep where 'I'll figure it out' is not a plan.

For oxygen users, know the backup supply and the power plan. A concentrator needs power; tanks don't but run out. Know how many hours of oxygen you have on tanks, how you'd get more, and what the emergency plan is. This is a conversation with the supplier, not a guess. The power plan and the oxygen plan are the same plan.

This page is planning guidance, not medical advice. For anything specific to a condition, the right source is your clinician. The plan here is: have the conversation, build the backup, know the storage, and rehearse what to do if the power or the pharmacy is out for a week. Don't substitute a blog for a doctor — but do use the blog to know what conversation to have with the doctor.

This is planning guidance, not emergency advice. In an emergency, call 911. See a mistake? Report it.

Keep planning the basics