Palliative care is specialized medical care for people living with a serious illness. It provides symptom relief, comfort, and support.

Key points about palliative care include:

It can be provided in hospitals, nursing homes, outpatient clinics, or at home.

Medicare, Medicaid, and insurance policies may cover palliative care.

It helps people live as fully and comfortably as possible with a life-limiting illness.

It is available to all patients with serious illness regardless of age, prognosis, disease stage, or treatment choice.

What is palliative care?
Palliative care is focused on improving quality of life for people with serious illnesses and their care partners. It is available to people of any age who need it, not just older adults. The major elements of palliative care include managing a person’s symptoms effectively and ensuring that their care is coordinated.

Palliative care is interdisciplinary, which means that it involves multiple types of doctors and other care providers. These providers work together with patients and their families and care partners to ensure that the treatment plan reflects the person’s goals and values.

Palliative care can start as early as a person’s diagnosis or not until later in their illness, and it can occur alongside other types of treatment for the disease. This form of care includes, but is not limited to, advance care planning, end-of-life care, hospice care, and bereavement support.