1,600,000 to 1,700,000 patients received services from hospice, including non-Medicare beneficiaries. Nearly 48 percent of all Medicare decedents in 2014 received care from a hospice program. Hospice is a covered benefit under the Medicare program. There were 4,025 Medicare-certified hospices serving more than 1,300,000 Medicare beneficiaries in 2014. (3) Despite a high intensity of medical treatment, many seriously ill patients experience troubling symptoms, unmet psychological and personal care needs, and high caregiver burden. Numerous studies have shown that adding palliative care can improve pain and symptom control, quality of life, and family satisfaction with care. (4) Health care providers need better education about pain management and palliative care. Students graduating from medical, nursing and other health professional schools today have very little, if any, training in the core precepts of pain and symptom management, advance care planning, communication skills, and care coordination for patients with serious or life-threatening illness. Even for specialists, training is lacking. For example, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education requires oncology fellowship programs to integrate competence in palliative care into their curriculum and the American Society of Clinical Oncology has recommended the integration of palliative care services into standard oncology practice at the time a person is diagnosed with metastatic or advanced cancer. Yet a 2015 national survey found hematology/oncology fellows were inadequately prepared to provide palliative care to their patients. Less than half had a rotation in palliative care and 25 percent of fellows reported no explicit teaching on key skills such as assessing prognosis, conducting a family meeting to discuss treatment options, and referral to palliative care. (5) The American Board of Medical Specialties and the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education provided formal subspecialty status for hospice and palliative medicine in