While both palliative care and hospice care share a lot in common, there are some key differences. Both aim to ease the suffering of patients. Palliative care can take place at any time during the patient's care. While hospice is typically end-of-life and terminal care.
Both palliative and hospice care have a team of doctors, nurses, and specialists, hospice care often includes more emotional support, bereavement counseling, family support, spiritual support. Both aim to support and alleviate pain, but hospice is not focused on curing the patient, but on making their end-of-life journey as easy and with as little pain as possible.
They both have a range of settings. Each can be done at home, skilled nursing facilities. One key difference being that palliative will also often have outpatient settings while hospice offers a wide range of hospice-specific facilities and locations.
Referrals to palliative care can be sought after a diagnosis of a serious illness is made, while hospice referrals are made by specialists and physicians when the belief is that the patient has 6 months or fewer to live.
While these are not all of the differences, they are some of the main ones. Once more, both aim to support and relieve pain, they both come after a serious diagnosis, but hospice is end-of-life care.