Health care facilities are highly dependent on reliable sources of electrical power. Therefore, electric power is a mission-critical resource. Each health care facility must assess the risk of electrical power failure – at various degrees of magnitude and impact severity – and make plans to deal with such an emergency. Planning and implementation of risk reduction approaches to addressing electrical power failure are the responsibility of the facility engineer, as well as organization management, the risk manager, incident command leaders, and the medical staff. By assuming access to emergency electrical power systems and implementing contingency plans for clinicians to follow during both short-term and sustained losses of power, health care organizations can reduce the risk of adverse patient care events.