MADISON, Wis. (CBS 58) -- November is National Hospice and Palliative Care Month, which was established back in 1978 by President Jimmy Carter.

It's a chance to raise awareness and open conversations about end-of-life care.

Now UW Health in Madison is enhancing their efforts with a new program for these important services.

"The right pathway is respecting the patients and family's wishes to move more toward a comfort kind of care," said UW Health Chief Quality Officer Dr. Jeff Pothof. 

That care can sometimes have to be decided on a moment's notice.

"Sometimes patients don't have days, they're looking at hours or short days," Dr. Pothof said. "And the quicker we get them enrolled into a hospice program, the more time we have to talk about their goals of care."

That could be going home or going to an in-patient unit. 

Since the launch of the program in the summer, officials said it's largely been successful.

"Still working to perfect what little bugs that happen when you put in a new program but for the most part it's going really well," Dr. Pothof said. "The volumes have been exceeding what we expected and what maybe we didn't anticipate is when we created a process that made it easier for folks to get into hospice status, that made it easier for our providers to offer it."

Now they're hoping to expand the program by working with local hospice agencies so that even more people can spend their final days in whatever their best environment is. 

"I think it can be a bit uncomfortable to say, hey, maybe doing everything isn't what your loved one wants," Dr. Pothof said. "Let's have a real discussion about what they would want and how we can help facilitate."