Depending on your passenger complement, age group and health status, it is likely that at least some will be stressed merely by the fact that the aircraft cabin in normal cruise is x number of thousand feet above sea level pressure. If the cabin climbs above 10,000 and certainly above 15,000 feet, some passengers will face very serious health consequences if not the imminent threat of death. This is your responsibility and you may face a Court of Law and gaol if you get it wrong.
I think it is very unlikely that people will face very serious health consequences if they are being exposed to a cabin altitude above 10000 ft for a short time. If this was the case aircraft designers would make the aircraft to drop the masks as soon as the cabin altitude would be over 10000ft. Furthermore ... in case of a rapid decompression where the cabin altitude would reach the cruise altitude this would result in many serious health problems if I understand your statement. I have not seen so many incident reports stating this issue....
In my opinion, with this scenario I agree with many posts made before. Descend to FL100/MEA. Exactly like airbus states in the procedures. No word about emergency descent. Descent ... do not delay ... and maybe expedite a little bit (to avoid the rubber jungle in the back of the aircraft off course).
The only time when the term "emergency descent" comes into my mind is when ATC is not very co-operative. If in this case your PAN call did not solve the problem you might consider using this term to get immediate descent clearance...
Just some thoughts....