A notice from the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation is not a request for your side of the story. By the time it reaches you, a file on you already exists.
Doctors are also judged on their own set of rules. There is a medical board, a committee that sorts complaints twice a month, and a path to suspension that does not always wait for a hearing.
Our professional license defense page covers how IDFPR works across every profession. This page covers what changes when the license is a medical one.
IDFPR can reprimand you, place you on probation, suspend your medical license, revoke it, or fine you up to $10,000 for each violation under 225 ILCS 60/22 (opens in a new tab). After the Department brings charges it must give you at least 30 days notice of the hearing. You then have 20 days from service to answer in writing, under oath.
IDFPR does not make this call alone. The Illinois State Medical Board advises the Secretary. It has 17 members named by the Governor under 225 ILCS 60/7.1 (opens in a new tab), and ten of those seats go to doctors of medicine and osteopathy.
Inside that board sits a Complaint Committee. It meets at least twice a month, and it decides whether your file gets closed, reviewed by the Chief of Medical Prosecutions, or pushed forward.
One point surprises most doctors. The Board only recommends. The Secretary decides, and under 225 ILCS 60/44 (opens in a new tab) the Secretary may go against what the Board recommended.
Section 22 lists more than fifty grounds. These come up most:
The reporting grounds catch careful doctors. Nothing went wrong in Illinois. The violation is the silence.
| Deadline | What has to happen | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 5 business days after certain criminal charges are filed | The Secretary orders that you see patients only with a chaperone | 20 ILCS 2105/2105-165 |
| At least 30 days before the hearing | The Department must serve written notice of the charges | 225 ILCS 60/36 |
| 20 days after that notice is served | You must file a written answer under oath | 225 ILCS 60/36 |
| 15 days after a temporary suspension | The Board must hold a hearing | 225 ILCS 60/37 |
| 20 days after the Board’s report is served | You may ask for a rehearing | 225 ILCS 60/40 |
| 35 days after the final decision is served | You must file for review in Circuit Court | 735 ILCS 5/3-103 |
Two of those run against you. The 20 day answer is the one people lose. Miss it and the Secretary may suspend, revoke, or place your license on probation with no hearing at all, under 225 ILCS 60/37 (opens in a new tab).
The Secretary can suspend a doctor’s license before any hearing. It takes evidence that your continued practice would be an immediate danger to the public, and it happens as the hearing process begins.
Section 37 then requires a hearing before the Medical Board within 15 days.
Fifteen days is not long to build a defense. It is workable if the work started earlier.
Some convictions end a medical license on their own. Under 20 ILCS 2105/2105-165 (opens in a new tab), a health care worker is revoked by operation of law, with no hearing, after a conviction for a forcible felony, for battery against a patient during care, or for an offense that requires sex offender registration.
The word conviction there includes supervision and first offender probation. A plea that looks like a win in criminal court can still end a career.
That statute reaches charges too. Once one of those charges is filed, the prosecutor tells the Department. Within five business days the Secretary orders that you see every patient with a licensed chaperone present, and your patients get written notice of the order.
If the charges are dropped, or you are not convicted, the order has to be vacated and taken out of public view. That is why the two cases have to be run as one. Our criminal defense team handles both sides.
Under 225 ILCS 60/23 (opens in a new tab), a hospital has to report to the Medical Board when a doctor’s clinical privileges are ended or restricted over patient care, or over a disability that may put patients at risk.
It also has to report when you give up privileges rather than face formal action. Resigning quietly does not close the matter. It opens one.
Credentialing runs on its own track, and what you say there lands in the Department’s file.
The Board sends the Secretary written findings and a recommendation. You get 20 days after that report is served to ask for a rehearing under 225 ILCS 60/40 (opens in a new tab), and you have to state the ground.
Then review moves to the Circuit Court. Under 225 ILCS 60/41 (opens in a new tab) you file in the county where you live, or in Sangamon County if you live outside Illinois. The window is 35 days from service, under 735 ILCS 5/3-103 (opens in a new tab).
Read Section 41 closely on one point. Sanctions tied to direct patient care stay in force while the court case runs. Filing for review does not put you back to work.
225 ILCS 60/43 (opens in a new tab) lets the Department restore a license once a term of probation, suspension, or revocation is served out. The Secretary can say no if restoration is not in the public interest, and that follows an investigation and a hearing.
Where the revocation came from a forcible felony that did not require sex offender registration, you may petition more than five years after the conviction, or more than three years after release, whichever is later.
Restoration is a petition, not a form. It turns on what you can show about compliance and fitness to practice.
The answer you file becomes the record. These five steps protect what we will need to argue later.
We represent doctors before IDFPR and the Illinois State Medical Board. Most of this work happens in writing, in conferences, and at hearings rather than in a courtroom. That means it can be handled wherever in Illinois you practice.
Court review is the exception. That filing goes to the county where you live.
The answer you file is the record. Everything after it gets argued against what you wrote in those 20 days.
Tell us what the notice says, the date it was served, and whether you have spoken with an investigator. We will walk you through what the Department has to prove and what the next three weeks should hold.
Call Ktenas Law at (312) 800-1626 or request a case review. Conversations with us are confidential.
20 days from the date the notice was served on you, in writing and under oath. If you do not answer, the Secretary may suspend, revoke, or place your license on probation without holding a hearing at all.
Yes, for a time. The Secretary may suspend a doctor’s license without a hearing where the evidence shows that continued practice would be an immediate danger to the public. A hearing before the Medical Board then has to be held within 15 days.
It can, and for some offenses Illinois takes the discretion away. A conviction for a forcible felony, for battery against a patient during care, or for an offense that requires sex offender registration revokes a health care license by operation of law. Supervision and first offender probation count as convictions there, so both cases have to be defended together. Our criminal defense team handles both.
You are not required to give a statement on the spot, and waiting until you have counsel is not an admission of anything. Investigators build the file before they call the licensee, so the conversation is rarely the open fact finding it sounds like.
Yes, in defined situations. A hospital has to report to the Medical Board when a doctor’s clinical privileges are ended or restricted over patient care, and also when a doctor gives up privileges rather than face formal action.
It is a recommendation, not a decision. The Board reports its findings to the Secretary, who makes the final call and may act against what the Board recommended. That is why the record built at the hearing matters more than how the room reads on the day.
Usually not, where the sanction relates to direct patient care. The Medical Practice Act keeps those sanctions in full force during court review as a matter of public policy, so filing in the Circuit Court does not by itself return you to practice.
Sometimes. The Department may restore a license once a term of probation, suspension, or revocation is served out, unless the Secretary finds after an investigation and a hearing that restoration is not in the public interest. Different timing applies after certain felony convictions. Our professional license defense page covers restoration in other fields.
This page is general information about Illinois medical licensing law and is not legal advice. Deadlines run from the date of service, and what applies to your case depends on the charges and on your own license history. Speak with an attorney about your situation.
