As the aging population increases, the need for palliative care to address serious and chronic illnesses has also increased. However, there is little research on whether palliative care programs meet national staffing guidelines.

This article describes an analysis of self-reported operational data on hospital-based palliative care programs from the 2012–13 annual voluntary surveys of the National Palliative Care Registry to examine whether staffing differences were impacted by program characteristics, hospital characteristics, or region.