Guide · Healthcare · Medical Practice Act

The Illinois Medical Practice Act After Public Act 104-0796: The 2032 Sunset, Record Retention, Discipline Deadlines, and Licensing Changes

The 2026 sunset bill did more than keep the Medical Practice Act alive. It is already in force, and it adds a record-retention rule, rewrites the deadlines for starting discipline, broadens a disciplinary ground, changes office inspections, and adjusts license application requirements.

By Lincoln Square Law · 11-minute read

Illinois licenses physicians and chiropractic physicians under the Medical Practice Act of 1987, and like most professional licensing laws in the state it carries an expiration date that the General Assembly must extend. In 2026 that date was January 1, 2027. House Bill 5387 moved it, and in the same bill the legislature amended more than two dozen sections of the Act and added a new one. The bill became Public Act 104-0796 when it was signed on August 7, 2026, and its effective date clause says the Act takes effect upon becoming law. The changes described here are therefore already in force rather than waiting for January.

This guide covers what changed for physicians, practices, and the people who manage them, in the order a practice is likely to feel it. It is based on the enrolled text of the Act. Several of the amendments are technical, such as replacing gendered pronouns and modernizing spelling, and those are not discussed.

The Act now runs to January 1, 2032

Illinois schedules professional licensing laws for repeal through the Regulatory Sunset Act. Public Act 104-0796 struck the Medical Practice Act of 1987 from the Regulatory Sunset Act’s 2027 schedule and placed it on the 2032 schedule (5 ILCS 80/4.37, 4.42). Section 5 of the Act did the same for several other health professions’ Acts, including the Clinical Psychologist Licensing Act, the Marriage and Family Therapy Licensing Act, and the Illinois Optometric Practice Act of 1987.

The practical consequence is continuity. Licenses, disciplinary authority, and the fee-splitting and entity rules in the Act continue without a gap. Agreements, policies, and compliance materials that cited the 2027 date as a risk can drop that caveat, though they should still refer to the Act as amended from time to time. The compiled section headers may continue to show the old repeal notation until the statutes are recompiled, so the Regulatory Sunset Act is the controlling place to confirm the date.

A statutory record-retention period for physicians

For the first time, the Act states how long a physician must keep patient records. New Section 70 requires a physician to retain all medical records of adult patients that were not appropriately transferred to another physician or entity for at least 6 years after the last date of service for each patient. For minor patients, the period is at least 6 years after the last date of service or until the patient reaches age 21, whichever is longer. Both rules apply except as otherwise required by law (225 ILCS 60/70).

Three drafting points follow from that text. First, the clock runs from the last date of service for each patient, not from the date of a particular record, so a long-standing patient’s oldest records stay in scope as long as care continues. Second, records that were appropriately transferred to another physician or entity fall outside the duty, which makes the transfer record itself worth keeping when a physician leaves a group or a practice is sold. Third, the phrase “except as otherwise required by law” means Section 70 is a floor. Other federal or state rules, payer contracts, or facility requirements may require longer retention, and the practice schedule should use the longest applicable period.

HIPAA does not change this analysis. The HIPAA rules require covered entities to keep their required policies and documentation for 6 years, but they do not set a retention period for the medical record itself. A practice that built its schedule around the HIPAA documentation rule should confirm that its medical-record schedule now meets Section 70 separately.

New deadlines for starting disciplinary proceedings

Section 22 lists the grounds on which IDFPR may discipline a license and sets time limits on bringing those cases. Public Act 104-0796 rewrote the time-limit paragraph. As amended, all proceedings to take disciplinary action must be commenced within 5 years after the Department receives a complaint alleging a violation, or notice of a conviction order, with ground (26) exempt from that 5-year limit. No action may be commenced more than 10 years after the date of the incident or act alleged, and grounds (8), (9), (26), and (29) are exempt from the 10-year limit (225 ILCS 60/22).

The exempt grounds are practicing under a false name or, except as provided by law, an assumed name (8), fraud or misrepresentation in applying for, procuring, or renewing a license (9), a pattern of practice or other behavior demonstrating incapacity or incompetence (26), and cheating on or attempting to subvert a licensing examination (29). The amendment also deleted the earlier sentence that defined which incidents could be counted as part of a pattern under ground (26), including incidents and reports within a 10-year look-back period. For physicians, the result is that a pattern-of-practice case is not limited by either period, and the statute no longer states how far back the pattern may reach.

Malpractice settlements and judgments open a 5-year window

The Act separately addresses claims that a licensee was negligent in providing care. When such a claim is settled in favor of the claimant, or a civil action is reduced to a final judgment for the plaintiff, the settlement or judgment is reported to the Department under Section 23. Before the amendment, the Department had an additional period of 2 years from that notification to investigate and begin formal proceedings. Now the Department is exempt from the 10-year limitation in those cases and has 5 years from receipt of the report (225 ILCS 60/22).

That change matters to physicians negotiating settlements and to the groups and insurers that report them. A settled claim about care that is more than 10 years old can still lead to a disciplinary filing, and the Department’s window after the report is more than twice as long as it was. The time a license holder spends outside Illinois still does not count toward any of these periods. Physicians should expect a reportable settlement to stay open as a licensing matter for years, and should coordinate with defense counsel and their carrier before agreeing to settlement terms that affect how the claim is described.

Sexual harassment is now an express disciplinary ground

Ground (20) already reached immoral conduct in the commission of any act, including sexual misconduct related to the licensee’s practice. Public Act 104-0796 adds sexual harassment related to the licensee’s practice and defines it for that paragraph as unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, or other verbal, physical, or nonverbal conduct of a sexual nature (225 ILCS 60/22(A)(20)). The definition is not limited to conduct toward patients. Conduct toward staff, trainees, or colleagues can qualify if it is related to the licensee’s practice.

For a group practice or health system, this ground connects licensing risk to the workplace complaint process. Harassment policies, investigation records, and decisions about reporting should be reviewed with the licensing consequence in mind, and the physician employment agreement should address cooperation with investigations and the effect of a licensing action on employment.

Office inspections now require a subpoena for records

Section 38(d) allows the Department to inspect a physician’s business premises when there is probable cause to believe that a disciplinary violation has occurred or is occurring there. Before the amendment, the Medical Board issued an order authorizing an investigator to enter, and the order expired after five business days. As amended, an appropriately qualified Department investigator may enter the premises upon a probable-cause determination, with due consideration for patient care, to inspect the physical premises, equipment, and furnishings. The right to inspection does not include business, medical, or personnel records on the premises without a subpoena issued under that Section or Section 2105-105 of the Department of Professional Regulation Law. Inspections remain limited to the facility’s normal business hours (225 ILCS 60/38(d)).

Front-desk and practice-management staff should know the difference. An investigator may be entitled to see the premises and equipment, while a request for charts, billing files, or personnel records should be met with a request for the subpoena and a call to counsel. Practices should name the person who will respond to an inspection and keep the procedure with other regulatory-response materials.

License applications: re-entry courses, taxpayer numbers, and education standards

Several changes affect applicants. Section 9 already required an applicant for a license to practice medicine in all of its branches, or for a chiropractic physician license, who has not been in active practice or enrolled in a medical program for 2 years before applying to submit proof of professional capacity to the Medical Board. That requirement is unchanged. The amendment adds successful completion of a re-entry course to the list of criteria the Medical Board may consider in deciding professional capacity (225 ILCS 60/9). For a physician returning after a leave, a re-entry program is now a named route to making that showing.

Section 9.5 now allows an original license application to include an individual taxpayer identification number as an alternative to a Social Security Number (225 ILCS 60/9.5). Section 9.7 adds applicants under Section 15.5 to those who must submit fingerprints for a criminal history check (225 ILCS 60/9.7). Section 11 removes references to Canada from the minimum education standards, so a medical or osteopathic college in Canada is no longer grouped with colleges in the United States and its territories when the Department applies those standards (225 ILCS 60/11). Applicants educated in Canada should review which standard now applies before filing.

The international medical graduate delegation subsection is gone

Section 54.2(g) had allowed a physician licensed to practice medicine in all of its branches to delegate tasks to an international medical graduate physician working under on-site supervision, subject to record-keeping about the graduate’s certification, examination results, and unencumbered foreign license. That subsection stated that it would become inoperative upon the adoption of rules implementing Section 15.5. Public Act 104-0796 replaces subsection (g) with “(Blank)” (225 ILCS 60/54.2(g)). Practices that relied on that subsection should stop using it as authority and determine whether the graduate qualifies under another provision of the Act, including any pathway under Section 15.5, before the graduate performs further delegated work.

What a practice should update now

• Revise the medical-record retention schedule to meet Section 70 for adults and minors, and keep evidence of any appropriate transfer of records.
• Remove the January 1, 2027 sunset caveat from agreements and policies, and cite the Act as amended.
• Update harassment and investigation procedures to account for ground (20), and align employment agreements with licensing consequences.
• Prepare an inspection response procedure that distinguishes premises access from records, which require a subpoena.
• Review any arrangement that relied on Section 54.2(g) for international medical graduates.
• Calendar disciplinary exposure for reported settlements and judgments at 5 years from the report.

Most of these steps are documentation changes rather than new programs. The record-retention rule is the one most likely to require operational work, because older paper and electronic records may already be scheduled for destruction under a shorter period. Pause any scheduled destruction until the schedule has been checked against Section 70.

Law reviewed through October 26, 2026.