Who to call about hospice and palliative care organizations

This page is for families thinking about hospice or palliative care. It explains what the National Alliance for Care at Home is, how its tools can help you find care, and what it cannot do.

People often search for "hospice organization." They expect to find a single national hospice they can call and be admitted to. That is not quite what exists here. It is worth being clear about that up front.

The National Alliance for Care at Home is what's known as a trade and advocacy association. It was formed by merging two older organizations. These were the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization (NHPCO) and the National Association for Home Care & Hospice (NAHC). It calls itself the largest group that represents, speaks for, teaches, and connects providers of care in the home.

Its members are hospice agencies, home health agencies, and palliative care providers. They are not individual patients. Its main activities are:

• Advocacy. It describes itself as a unified, more powerful voice for providers of care in the home.
• Education. Its website lists an annual meeting and webinars aimed at the professionals who work at these organizations.
• Membership. It describes a network of home health, hospice, palliative, Medicaid home and community-based services (HCBS), and home care professionals.

So the Alliance's day-to-day work is aimed at the industry. It is not aimed at families directly.

The Alliance does maintain patient-facing tools, even though its core mission is provider-focused. A "Find a Provider" tool lets you search for hospice, home health, or palliative care organizations near you. A companion resource called CaringInfo is built for patients and families. It helps them understand care options and locate providers.

These tools are the practical entry point. Use them if you land on the Alliance's website looking for actual care.

It can help you find real providers near you, through its finder tool. Use it when you don't know where to start.

It can give you a starting education, through CaringInfo, on what hospice and palliative care actually involve. This is useful before a harder conversation with your care team.

It cannot admit you to hospice. Enrollment happens through an individual hospice provider. Under Medicare, a hospice doctor and your regular doctor, if you have one, must certify a life expectancy of 6 months or less. It does not happen through the Alliance itself.

It cannot guarantee quality at any specific provider. Membership in a trade association is not a certification of excellence for any single agency. You still need to evaluate a specific hospice on its own record.

It does not manage your case. Once you choose a provider, your day-to-day care relationship is with that specific hospice or home care agency. It is not with the Alliance.

It is not a government regulator. It advocates for providers and offers them education. Medicare's hospice benefit is run by the government, separately from this association.

Your family may be starting to think about hospice or palliative care. If so, CaringInfo is a reasonable first stop for plain-language background. From there, use the Find a Provider tool. Or ask your oncology team directly which local hospice and palliative care organizations they already work with. That referral relationship often smooths the process considerably.

NHPCO and NAHC represented overlapping parts of the same field for years before combining into the National Alliance for Care at Home. Home health, hospice, and palliative care providers often work with the same patients at different points in an illness. The Alliance describes the merger as a historic alliance that creates a unified, more powerful advocacy voice.

Two hospices can both be reputable members and still differ widely. They may have different staffing, visit your home more or less often, and handle nights and weekends differently. So ask direct questions of any provider you are thinking about.

Many families wait longer than they need to before bringing up hospice or palliative care. Sometimes this is out of fear that it signals giving up. Palliative care in particular can start alongside active treatment, not only at the very end. Asking your care team early about what these terms mean for your specific situation costs nothing. It can open options sooner rather than later.