What is the difference between palliative care and hospice? Palliative care is a frequently misunderstood term. Historically it was kind of a wastebasket umbrella term that has meant a lot of different things to different people, including end stage terminal end of life kind of care. Now we would say that palliative care is a much broader sort of sphere of influence such that all end of life care fits under the bucket of palliative care, but not all palliative care is end of life care, if that makes sense. I find that to be a helpful way to explain it. Hospice care is really actually more of an insurance benefit. Usually hospice care is a kind of philosophy of care as well, and sometimes it constitutes a place, but largely hospice care is a Medicare benefit that people receive near the end of life that generally requires one to recognize and accept that disease modifying care isn't going to change their outcome and that they won't be cured of their cancer. And so instead they focus on comfort and quality of life, even if that means foregoing disease directed therapies and possibly having a bit less time or maybe just focusing on comfort instead of focusing on actively treating the underlying cancer or whatever other serious illness it might be. Most hospice care takes place in the home, but sometimes people receive care in hospice houses or hospice units or what's called inpatient unit type of hospice care, which is actually a higher level, more sophisticated version of hospice care when people have particularly challenging refractory symptoms that aren't able to be managed at home as well. So most people, if they do spend some time in an inpatient hospice unit, it will be for a short period of time, either at the very end of life for days or maybe a week or two, or as a transition to improve how they're feeling to get them well enough to go back home to spend their last days or hours or weeks in the home environment where most people want to be at the end of life. So usually when we're talking about palliative care these days, we're more often referring to specialist palliative care, which is much more like infectious disease care or cardiology care or endocrinology care or any other medical specialty where it's a trained person who's board certified who possesses special skills in that area. And that person may sometimes provide hospice care, but often it's more of a consultative specialty model that you add to sophisticated high quality cancer care.