Palliative care relieves the symptoms and stress of a serious illness at any stage, alongside treatment. Hospice is comfort care once curative treatment stops and a roughly six-month terminal prognosis is set. Hospice is a defined, CMS-certified Medicare benefit — CMS lists 6,943 certified hospices.
The core difference
Both relieve suffering, and hospice is in fact a form of palliative care. The line between them is timing and intent. Palliative care can start the day of a serious diagnosis and run beside chemotherapy, dialysis, or surgery. Hospice starts when the aim is no longer to cure the terminal illness, and the whole plan turns to comfort.
- Begins at diagnosis of a serious illness
- Runs alongside curative treatment
- No prognosis requirement
- Billed as standard Medicare services
- Hospital, clinic, or home
- Begins at a ~6-month terminal prognosis
- Replaces curative treatment for that illness
- Defined Medicare Hospice Benefit
- Interdisciplinary team + family support
- 6,943 CMS-certified hospices
When each begins
Palliative care has no clock — it is appropriate as soon as a serious illness causes symptoms or stress, and studies tie early palliative care to better quality of life. Hospice has a defined trigger: two physicians generally certify a terminal prognosis of six months or less if the disease runs its expected course, and the patient elects the Hospice Benefit in place of curative coverage for that illness.
Where care happens
Palliative care teams commonly work inside hospitals and clinics, as well as at home. Hospice is overwhelmingly delivered where the person lives, with periodic visits and round-the-clock on-call support, plus short inpatient stays for intensive symptom management. Certified hospices operate across 55 states and territories.
What Medicare covers
Palliative services are usually paid through standard Medicare Parts A and B as individual visits, treatments, and medications — there is no single consolidated palliative benefit. Hospice has its own defined benefit: it covers the team, medications and equipment related to the terminal condition, short inpatient and respite care, and bereavement support for the family, with little or no cost-sharing for the covered hospice services.
Finding a certified hospice
Because hospice is a federal benefit, every certified hospice appears in CMS records under its CMS Certification Number, with ownership and family-experience measures attached. Palliative care, by contrast, is a service rather than a certified facility type, so there is no single federal hospice-style registry of palliative programs.
Certified hospices, by the numbers
Compare certified hospices
Browse certified hospices by state, including ownership — each field traced to its CMS source and snapshot date.
Browse hospice data →Frequently asked questions
- What is the difference between hospice and palliative care?
- Palliative care relieves the symptoms and stress of a serious illness and can run alongside curative treatment at any stage. Hospice is a form of palliative care reserved for a terminal illness once curative treatment stops and a prognosis of about six months is set. Hospice is a defined, CMS-certified Medicare benefit; CMS lists 6,943 certified hospices.
- Can you have palliative care without being terminal?
- Yes. Palliative care is appropriate from the point of a serious diagnosis — heart failure, cancer, COPD, and others — regardless of prognosis, and it continues alongside treatments meant to cure or control the disease. It focuses on pain, symptoms, and quality of life while other care proceeds.
- Is hospice a type of palliative care?
- Yes. Hospice is palliative care delivered at the end of life. The difference is timing and intent: palliative care can begin at diagnosis and coexist with curative treatment, while hospice begins when curative treatment for a terminal illness is no longer pursued and the goal is comfort.
- Does Medicare cover palliative care and hospice differently?
- Yes. Palliative care is generally billed through standard Medicare Parts A and B as individual services — physician visits, medications, and treatments — without a separate consolidated benefit. Hospice has its own defined Medicare Hospice Benefit that covers the interdisciplinary team, related medications, equipment, and bereavement support for the terminal illness.
- Where is hospice and palliative care provided?
- Both are most often delivered where the person lives — at home, in assisted living, or in a nursing home — and palliative care is also common in hospitals and clinics. Certified hospices operate across 55 states and territories, with periodic team visits and on-call support wherever the patient is.
- How do I compare certified hospices?
- Certified-hospice records are listed on CMS Care Compare and mirrored on Fonteum, with available source and snapshot metadata displayed on supported ownership and family-experience fields. Of the 6,943 certified hospices in the loaded data, 4,790 are for-profit — a difference worth checking when you compare options by state.
Related
- What is hospice care? — the Medicare Hospice Benefit and who qualifies, in depth.
- Home health vs. hospice — recovery-focused care next to comfort care.
- Medicare home health care: what’s covered — skilled home care under the standard Medicare benefit.
- Hospice quality & ownership data — per-hospice CMS measures with available provenance metadata on supported fields.
- Hospice availability by state — where certified hospices are concentrated and sparse.
- What Medicare certification means — how a hospice becomes a certified Medicare provider.