Building an Emergency Plan Before the Crisis Hits

The best time to write down what a hospital, a substitute caregiver, or a panicked version of yourself would need to know is before you need it.

What actually belongs in an emergency plan

Keep it short enough that someone unfamiliar with the situation could use it under stress, not a comprehensive history that takes twenty minutes to read.

• Current medications, dosages, and timing, plus known allergies.
• Primary care doctor, neurologist or geriatrician, and pharmacy, with phone numbers.
• Emergency contacts in priority order — who to call first, second, third.
• Insurance information and Medicare/Medicaid numbers.
• Location of legal documents: power of attorney, advance directive, DNR if applicable.
• A brief note on baseline cognitive status, so a hospital team unfamiliar with your loved one can tell what's new confusion versus their usual baseline.

Why baseline status matters more than most people realize

Emergency room staff meeting your loved one for the first time have no way to know what's normal for them — that gap can lead to real misunderstandings.

A person with moderate dementia who seems confused and disoriented might look, to an ER team seeing them for the first time, like they're in acute medical crisis, when in fact that's simply their day-to-day baseline. Conversely, a sudden new level of confusion beyond their normal baseline can be a sign of something urgent — like a UTI, a stroke, or delirium from a new medication — that deserves fast attention. A short note describing typical day-to-day functioning helps a new care team correctly interpret what they're seeing, rather than either overreacting to normal baseline behavior or underestimating a genuinely new and urgent change.

Keep both a physical and digital copy

Emergencies don't reliably come with working phones, unlocked devices, or time to search through files — a printed copy removes those dependencies entirely.

A physical copy on the refrigerator, in a labeled folder by the door, or in a bag that goes with your loved one to any appointment or hospital visit means a paramedic, a neighbor, or a substitute caregiver can grab it without needing your phone password or a moment to search through digital files during a stressful moment. A digital copy, shared with a few trusted family members or accessible through a phone's medical ID feature, adds redundancy in case the physical copy isn't where you expect it. Neither replaces the other; together they cover more scenarios than either alone.

Building it now, while things are calm

Assembling this information during an actual emergency is far harder than doing it in advance, when you have time to think clearly and gather details accurately.

It's tempting to put this off — there's no urgent deadline until suddenly there is one. But a crisis is exactly the wrong time to be trying to remember a specialist's phone number, locate a legal document, or recall the exact dosage of a medication from memory while also managing an actual emergency. Set aside thirty minutes now, gather what you can, and treat gaps (a document you can't find, a specialist's number you don't have handy) as a short follow-up task rather than something to solve today. A plan that's 80% complete and accessible is far more useful than a perfect plan that only exists as an intention.

Keeping it current

Medication lists, contact numbers, and even the baseline status note tend to go stale faster than people expect, so a periodic check-in matters.

Set a recurring reminder — every three to six months is reasonable — to review and update the plan, since medications change after appointments, phone numbers change, and baseline functioning can shift as the disease progresses. An outdated plan handed to a paramedic or an unfamiliar hospital team can be almost as unhelpful as no plan at all if the medication list no longer matches what's actually being taken.