Ken Haglind is a healthcare-focused business leader who has served in executive leadership positions over the last two decades with several Minnesota-based businesses. Leveraging his significant leadership background, Ken Haglind now serves as president of Minnesota Hospice, which provides patients and families with compassionate and innovative end-of-life hospice care.

Palliative care is a special form of medical care designed to help people with chronic conditions live a better quality of life. To that aim, palliative care focuses on relieving the symptoms of diagnosed conditions and also strengthening the social and emotional support an individual receives. For example, a patient with advanced cancer can live more comfortably if palliative care is provided to them in an outpatient palliative care clinic, a nursing home, a hospital, or their own home. Troubling symptoms like pain or sickness can be prevented or alleviated by the palliative care team.

Besides people with cancer, people with heart failure, Parkinson's disease, dementia, and obstructive pulmonary disease constitute a significant proportion of the ideal recipients of palliative care. Aging individuals who have general bodily discomfort can also receive palliative care. Palliative care is not the same thing as hospice care. While hospice care focuses on alleviating symptoms for individuals with terminal diseases that will result in an inevitable death, palliative care is not centered on terminal illness. In fact, a patient may receive palliative care while they are simultaneously receiving treatment for their condition.