- And for palliative care, is this something that you think is becoming more and more common across the country in terms of hospitals offering this kind of service?

- I do, yeah; yes.

I mean, I think it's becoming an important specialty just because more and more people are living with chronic and progressive diseases.

And more and more people are experiencing like repeated hospitalizations.

And that's one thing that Kristine and I's specialty can help out with is, you know, a lot of patients are hospitalized because of their symptoms, because of their progressive diseases.

And our specialty helps minimize the hospitalizations.

Not that we don't want them going back to the hospital, but just if we can help control symptoms at home while they're still getting their treatments, you know, it helps keep them comfortable at home still, so.

- And it provides a level of continuity of care.

A lot of times with today's medical system, patients have inpatient providers and then follow up with different providers outpatient.

Whereas we can see them in both settings.

And so it just helps to make sure that nothing's getting missed in that transition period between being in the hospital and going home.