Glossary
Short definitions for words you will see on this site. These are guides, not legal definitions.
Palliative care
Specialized care for people with a serious illness, focused on symptoms, comfort, and decisions. It can start at diagnosis and can be provided along with treatment meant to cure or control the illness.
Hospice
Comfort-focused care for a person who is terminally ill. Under Medicare, doctors must generally certify a prognosis of six months or less if the illness follows its normal course, and the person chooses comfort care instead of treatment aimed at curing that illness.
In-home palliative care / palliative care at home
Palliative care delivered where the person lives, rather than only in a hospital or clinic. A licensed home health or hospice agency may or may not offer it; the Texas license file does not say.
HCSSA
Home and Community Support Services Agency. The Texas license category that covers home health, hospice, and personal assistance services. The public directory is the HHA.xlsx file from HHSC.
Texas-licensed hospice provider
An agency whose HCSSA license lists a hospice service. This is a license label, not a statement that the agency offers a separate palliative program.
Texas-licensed home health agency
An agency whose HCSSA license lists home health services, including licensed-only or licensed-and-certified home health. Again, this is a license label, not a palliative care confirmation.
Medicare-certified / Medicare number on file
On this site, it means the HHSC directory includes a Medicare number we could parse as a hospice or home health CCN. We could not download CMS files when this version was built, so we do not independently confirm certification or show CMS quality scores.
Licensed only
The agency appears in the Texas license file without a Medicare hospice or home health number we could parse. It may still be lawfully licensed in Texas.
Parent, branch, and alternate delivery site
Ways Texas records related locations under a license. A parent is the main agency. A branch and an alternate delivery site are additional locations. We keep them as separate listings because the address and sometimes the services differ.
Enforcement action pending
A license status in the HHSC file. It is shown here as a neutral flag, not a conclusion about quality. Verify the current meaning on TULIP and ask the agency.
County of record
The county of the address on the license. It is not the agency’s service area.
TULIP
The Texas Unified Licensure Information Portal, the state’s live search for long-term care and HCSSA providers. Use it to verify a license. We do not scrape it.
CCN
CMS Certification Number, the six-digit identifier Medicare uses for a certified provider. When the state file lists one, we use it to build a Medicare.gov link.
Medicare hospice benefit
A Medicare Part A benefit for people who meet hospice eligibility rules and elect that coverage. It is not the same as billing for palliative care under Medicare Part B or private insurance.