People with severe chronic pain need somewhere safe to turn when their pain becomes unbearable and can no longer be managed at home.

Emergency rooms are designed to treat medical crises, yet chronic pain patients are often told that the emergency room is not the place for us. Our pain may be dismissed precisely because it is chronic—even when it has escalated into an acute crisis involving loss of function, vomiting, fainting, inability to move, or severe psychological distress.

Chronic pain does not become less painful simply because someone has endured it for months or years. Being practiced at surviving pain does not mean we can survive unlimited amounts of it without help.

Taking additional medication at home is not always safe or medically appropriate. But arriving at an emergency room without an established plan can mean hours of interrogation, repeated explanations, inconsistent treatment, and being labeled “drug-seeking” instead of receiving care.

We are asking the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to establish a nationwide hospital-based pain-crisis program for people with documented chronic pain.

The program should allow eligible patients, their established clinicians, and a participating hospital to create an individualized emergency pain-crisis plan before a crisis occurs. That plan should be available in the patient’s medical record and should include:

• The patient’s diagnoses, baseline condition, current medications, allergies, and relevant treatment history.

• Symptoms or changes requiring evaluation for a new or dangerous medical problem.

• Safe escalation options when the patient’s usual treatment is no longer enough.

• Access to monitored opioid medication when clinically appropriate—not an automatic promise of a particular medication or dose, but not an automatic refusal either.

• Clear safeguards against dangerous medication interactions, duplication, and inappropriate prescribing.

• Respectful treatment without blanket assumptions of addiction or drug-seeking based solely on chronic pain, disability, or prescribed opioid use.

• A plan for stabilization, discharge, and communication with the patient’s established care team.

This is not a request for unlimited medication or the removal of medical judgment. It is a request to replace chaos with planning, inconsistency with continuity, and stigma with responsible medical care.

Counseling, physical therapy, lifestyle support, and non-opioid treatments can all have a role in long-term care. They are not substitutes for effective relief during an acute pain crisis. Patients should not be offered mental-health intervention as the only response to suffering created by uncontrolled physical pain.

Untreated pain can push people into desperation. When someone wants to live but cannot continue enduring their current level of pain, the humane response is not dismissal—it is medical assistance to live.

We call on CMS and HHS to develop, fund, and evaluate a nationwide pilot program for individualized hospital-based pain-crisis plans, created with meaningful participation from chronic pain patients, pain specialists, emergency physicians, pharmacists, disability advocates, and experts in responsible opioid prescribing.

Please sign this petition if you believe chronic pain patients deserve a safe, responsible, and compassionate place to turn before unbearable pain becomes an even greater crisis.