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 2006, and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services recognized hospice and palliative medicine as a medical subspecialty in October of 2008. (6) As of February 2017, there were a total of 127 hospice and palliative medicine training programs accredited by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education. For the 2016–2017 academic year, these programs were training 327 physicians in hospice and palliative medicine. Some programs include an additional track in pediatrics, geriatrics, research, or public health. Fewer than a dozen of these ACGME-accredited training programs focus solely on pediatric palliative medicine though data show an increasing prevalence of children with complex chronic conditions who could benefit from such specialized care. (7) There is a large gap between the number of health care professionals with palliative care training and the number required to meet the needs of the growing population of individuals with serious or life-threatening illness. In 2015, 75 percent of U.S. hospitals with 50 or more beds had a palliative care program though not all these programs have in place the interdisciplinary team necessary to provide comprehensive, high-quality palliative care. Hospital data reported to the National Palliative Care Registry show that in 2015 only 44 percent of programs met national staffing standards set by the Joint Commission, even when including unfunded positions. Among the 56 percent of programs without complete interdisciplinary teams, 30 percent have no physician, 10 percent have no advanced practice registered nurse or RN, 54 percent have no social worker and 70 percent have no chaplain. Looking at just physician specialists, 2017 projections by the George Washington University Health Workforce Institute show that