What happens if the caregiver (me) has an accident and can't get to the phone, and neither can the patient?

I am a bit of a Luddite and so I avoid the "smart phones" but I do have a dumb one. A little jitterbug I am very fond of. Keep it in my jeans pocket and it goes with me everywhere. It has a little STAR on it you can get activated so that it is as good as pushing a star when you need 911 help. But of course you can also just call 911 on it. It's pretty much with me wherever I go. At 80 I could do down the stairs the hard way just with getting out in the a.m. in my kimono to feed the squirrels!
A bigger question is-------how are you doing overall?
Are you thinking you are coming up against the wall of your own limitations at all?
Or is this just this one very specific question.
My best to you. I worry you may injure yourself taxing your own strength at this point.

Everything everyone has said is fantastic. If you want to go the cheap route, there is a way too:
1. Give your trusted neighbors(s) a key, in case they need to let in the police or ambulance;
2. Buy a wristband for you and your husband that allows you to inscribe what to do in cases of emergency. The one I buy is called “Road ID.” It is just a simple plastic band with a metal plate that allows 5 lines of inscription. On mine, I have:
Line 1. my name and birth date
2. Address
3. Emergency contact 1
4. Emergency contact 2
5. Condition of my husband (“Husband has dementia.”)

This way, if I am in a car accident and unconscious, authorities know who to call and that they should look into my husband’s condition at home too.

On my husband’s band, it says pretty much the same thing, except that it also say, “I have dementia.”

Not foolproof, but does its job cheaply.

If I could find a portable submarine "ooga" /dive horn, I'd get one.  

Another option is a very  loud whistle, but it needs to be really loud.  

I fell 3x one day this week, and the issue of being stranded and w/o help became very real.   Getting a medic alert is now high on my priority.

A life alert button he wears all the time so that when he pushes the button, it calls for emergency help. A smart watch, I have an Apple series 7. It can be set up to alert someone if I fall. My LO also wears one and I can track his walks and am alerted if he falls. We can call each other from our watches. The watches connect us with each other’s phones and can be worn while swimming or showering. Expensive but a lot of peace of mind.

I am wearing a slimline runner's fanny pack (amazon) just big enough for my phone.

I recently had a mild stroke and have a heart procedure scheduled.

This gives me comfort without holding a phone all the time.

When I was working I always thought of my cell phone as part of my work paraphernalia and it usually lived in my briefcase or purse. In a discussion with my sons when I was approaching retirement changed all that. They wanted me to start acquiring the habit of wearing the phone and keeping it with me so that if I was ever in a tight spot I could call someone. It took years to get used to it, but I now have the phone in the pocket of my robe before I get dressed in the morning and in a pocket in my clothes during the day. At night it lives in a drawer beside the bed. It took my husband even longer to get into the habit, but he also has his phone with him all the time. I am especially careful to have it when I am gardening as our lot has some very steep places and I am pulling out long-established ivy and blackberry vines.

At any time that either of us has need of anyone or anything, we just use the phones. We have become so used to this that we even use them inside the house. If I am on my main floor office and my husband is in his top floor office instead of going to the stairway and yelling up a question, I just pick up the phone and call him. And vice versa. Of course, I am also aware that I have the phone in my pocket when I take the trash down the driveway to the street at the bottom of the hill. If I were to slip and fall, I would call my husband or 911, whichever seemed right for the situation.

Our learned habits of relying on the cell phones after 50 years of nothing but landlines has been a great relief to our sons and to each other as well as a comfort to us. Neither of us is ever alone, we have our phones. One time one of my sisters got home late at night, alone. She had one of those senseless fear attacks that most of us get once in a while confronting an empty and dark house. She called me and told me that she was frightened. We agreed that she would go inside, check out the house, and call me back. If she did not call back, I would call her local police with the information. Of course, she was fine, but it was a really good thing that we both knew that we could repeat this scenario any time one of us felt frightened. Both of us always have our phones.

I would suggest that you and your husband each get phones. You can get really inexpensive phones and cheap plans if you do not think you would use them much, but you might be surprised at how easily you may come to depend on that phone for a sense of safety and greater independence.

There are devices that you can press a button and it will alert the company to dispatch EMS.
I recently saw a commercial for an Apple Watch and if there is a fall and no response it will summon EMS with the GPS location.
Does he have a phone that he can use? You do not even have to dial a number on a Cell phone for an Emergency Call most will show a bar or icon for an emergency call.
You do not even need to have an active account to use a Cell phone for an emergency call, as long as the phone is charged an emergency call is possible.

If outside you yell. You keep yelling until a neighbour hears you. Or you scoot along the ground until finding something to make a noise with, like a stick & whack something noisy to gain attention.

If inside & can't get up, you scoot along until you can reach a chair to either use to pull yourself up or pull things down to. Pull a corded phone down to you. Or find objects to throw at a mobile/cell phone to knock it down to your level.

These are from lived experiences elderly fallers have told me.

If you have a portable phone, you can ensure you alwears have it on you. Eg Wear an apron with your phone in the pocket when outside.

If a longer time frame (than a short recovery) is expected, a falls alarm pendant (or bracelet) are very useful & reliable. Some are user activated (so no good if you hit your head or pass out) but others are motion detected. I believe types differ, as may annual fees.

Not sure of your Husband's issues - would he yell for help? (My Mother has speaking issues now: a soft frail voice & cannot).

"I've fallen, and I can't get up"

Life alert system

The Apple Watch has a fall detection app (other devices have something similar). This does not require you to press any button to request help. The app assesses a potential fall and will ask if you are ok. You press "I am ok" if you are ok. If there is no response, the watch tries by bleeping and tapping your wrist. If no response after 30 seconds, the watch send out an SOS signal those you program to contact. If you just wear the device, it does the work for you. And the SOS can ping others as to where you are. Obviously, it needs to be charged. Same thing on an iPhone but you could drop the phone and trip it, so potential for more false alarms.