The head of the Department of Healthcare and Family Services told lawmakers that early discussions are ongoing on ways stakeholders can address the “increasingly fragile” state of Illinois’ safety net health system.[Health News Illinois] 

HFS Director Elizabeth Whitehorn told the House’s Appropriations-Health and Human Services Committee last week that there are 32 Illinois hospitals that meet safety net designation, which received an estimated $2.9 billion for Medicaid services in the 2024 calendar year.

Along with years of structural budget challenges, Whitehorn said many safety nets are struggling to adjust as healthcare moves more toward outpatient, community-based and home-based care models.

HFS has provided advances as a form of bridge funding to enable hospitals to weather emergency financial situations, but Whitehorn said this has also led to a growing number of facilities either falling behind or failing to pay their taxes, which is a “critical revenue source” for the Medicaid program.

“This situation is not sustainable for the healthcare system or the state budget,” she said.

The agency is in the “earliest stages” of a comprehensive planning effort to bring stakeholders together to discuss sustainable strategies and solutions for safety-net providers.

Once running, Whitehorn said the process will include listening sessions, proposed policy changes and enhanced coordination between HFS and the Department of Public Health. The project will be led by Dan Fulwiler, who was appointed last fall as the state’s hospital strategy lead.

“This work does not contemplate closure of safety net hospitals or providers,” Whitehorn said. “It is focused on how we all can best serve patients and work together to leverage efficiencies that will enable safety-net providers to operate more sustainably over time.”

In other business, Whitehorn said they are still working to prepare Illinois for the various changes to the Medicaid program, which includes work requirements set to go into effect next year.

The department’s new estimates are that between 165,00 and 300,000 Illinoisans will lose Medicaid coverage due to the work requirement set to go into effect next year. The new federal definition of qualified aliens is expected to result in coverage loss for approximately 10,000 individuals who currently receive full benefits.

Illinois is facing a nearly $51 billion reduction in Medicaid expenditures over the next decade.

“Never before has the Medicaid program undergone such significant policy changes, let alone in such a short period of time,” Whitehorn said. “While we are confident in our ability to meet these obligations, it places enormous pressure and stress on our staff, systems and partners to ensure we are successful in satisfying the federal requirements while also providing a seamless experience for our customers.”

Whitehorn said the department has hired 220 employees since June 1 to help with the increased demand to implement the federal requirements.

In other business, she told lawmakers they are requesting a $100 million supplemental appropriation for the current fiscal year for the new rural health care transformation fund, which she said will allow them to draw down the roughly $193.4 million in federal funding that Illinois has been awarded.

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Data interoperability is top of mind for public health leaders as they grapple with tightening budgets, changes in reimbursements rates, evolving policy mandates and persistent workforce shortages, according to a new report. [Route 50 and APHA]

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The drive to improve data services comes as agencies nationwide are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence as a tool in government operations to enhance efficiency and streamline workflows, according to a report released Tuesday by data platform company Snowflake. The findings are based on a survey of 183 health care decision-makers, including public health agency officials. 

Indeed, 85% of respondents said data interoperability was a “higher or much higher priority” to their organization than in previous years, while 57% of respondents identified AI implementation as a reason for that, the report found. 

“Interoperability is not a top industry priority simply because regulators have said it should be,” Shahran Haider, deputy chief data officer of NYC Health and Hospitals, said in the report. “It is the connective tissue that enables AI-driven value across the full spectrum of operational efficiency and clinical improvement opportunities, benefiting not just individual organizations, but our health care system and society as a whole.”

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Since publishing roadmap last April, agency has successfully launched several key initiatives to replace animal testing with better alternatives

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today announced it achieved its key first-year goals in the implementation of its April 2025 Roadmap to Reducing Animal Testing in Preclinical Safety Studies, marking one year of transformative action to modernize drug development through innovative, human-relevant science. 

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"One year ago, we issued an ambitious roadmap to eliminate unnecessary animal testing and replace  animal testing with more precise ways of predicting drug safety in humans," said FDA Commissioner Marty Makary, M.D., M.P.H. "In addition to ushering in more scientifically accurate way to test drugs before they are used in humans, the agency has made great strides to reduce  research and development costs, which will lower drug prices for everyday Americans" 

From a purely scientific standpoint, animals are not a great model of how well drugs perform in humans. Historically, more than 90 percent of drugs that clear animal studies do not receive FDA approval, often due to safety or efficacy issues identified in human trials. To address this gap, FDA is advancing use of new approach methodologies (NAMs)—including advanced in vitro systems, computational modeling, and human-derived platforms—that better reflect human biology and improve prediction of drug effects. 

Unlike previous guidance to industry, the FDA's 2025 roadmap strategy established specific timeframes for phasing out animal testing where equivalent or better alternatives exist. Today, the agency released a follow-up report summarizing the agency's progress in implementing the roadmap and clarifying its next steps. 

Since issuing the roadmap, the agency has:  

• Released draft guidance on the reduction or elimination of nonhuman primate testing in monoclonal antibody development.  
• Updated guidance to support a transition from horseshoe crab-derived endotoxin testing, which could spare more than one million animals per year.
• Working to reduce or eliminate animal used for FDA approval when drugs have demonstrated safety from their broad use in humans in other countries.
• Released draft guidance expanding the use of weight-of-evidence approaches to support the use of NAMs, enabling drug developers to more readily incorporate in vitro assays, computational toxicology, and other human-relevant models to generate evidence across a wider array of safety endpoints.   
• Qualified the first artificial intelligence-based drug development tool, demonstrating the utility of leveraging cutting edge in silico models to support regulatory decision-making.  
• Launched a searchable database clarifying where alternative methods are acceptable, and established close collaboration with international regulators to align strategies.  

To sustain progress, FDA has deployed key infrastructure, including a permanent pathway for qualifying innovative drug development tools, cross-center scientific reviews, and a formal partnership with the National Institutes of Health. Together, these efforts are advancing a shift toward human-relevant science as the default approach to drug evaluation. 

This transition is expected to improve prediction of drug safety, accelerate development timelines, reduce costs, and expand patient access to innovative therapies, while significantly reducing reliance on animal testing. 

FDA will continue working with partners across government, industry, and academia to expand the use of these approaches and further modernize drug development. 

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Healthcare leaders across the U.S. are raising concerns after federal agencies shared intentions earlier this month to significantly revise the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act. Industry stakeholders say the decision could weaken enforcement, exacerbate access challenges and widen disparities in behavioral healthcare at a time of rising demand. [Becker's Behavioral Health]

Seven behavioral health executives shared their reaction to a recent policy development related to the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act.

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Editor’s note: Responses have been lightly edited for clarity and length. 

Sheryl Bates. Director of Mental Health Crisis Access and Utilization Management for Endeavour Health (Evanston, Ill.): The 2024 rule represented the most substantial update to parity regulations in nearly a decade, reinforcing requirements for insurers to evaluate and justify limitations on mental health and substance use disorder services. It emphasized transparency, requiring comparative analyses of nonquantitative treatment limitations.  The administration’s decision not to defend the rule introduces uncertainty and delays stronger enforcement. Oversight and accountability are already difficult and this may weaken it further.

Access to care is already a challenge across the country and decisions like this create further risk of it getting worse.

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A woman in her mid-40s arrives at the emergency department complaining of chest pain. She may be told by a well-meaning physician that what she’s experiencing is anxiety or possibly a panic attack. Maybe it’s indigestion, acid reflux, or musculoskeletal pain. But it’s less likely that she’d be diagnosed with a myocardial infarction, or heart attack. Too often, she’ll be sent home only to return the next day. They’ll test her troponin levels, which will be high enough to signal a cardiac event requiring immediate medical attention. [JAMA]

This is an all-too-common encounter that patients through the years have described to cardiologists Jason Kovacic, MBBS, PhD, and Harmony Reynolds, MD.

However, it may serve as the best-case scenario for premenopausal women experiencing acute coronary syndrome (ACS). “There are many patients making their way to specialists in heart disease for a second or third opinion because they aren’t getting a diagnosis,” said Reynolds, a cardiology professor at the New York University (NYU) Grossman School of Medicine. “They end up going to multiple cardiologists to feel like they’ve got somebody who is treating them with confidence.”

Kovacic, director of the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute and a professor of medicine at University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, called this a clinical “blind spot.” Younger women are considered at lower cardiovascular risk than other groups, but, he explained, the long-standing misconception that heart attacks only happen in older individuals or younger men is harming this particular patient population.

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Earlier this year, Naida Rutherford, the coroner in Richland County, South Carolina, was helping investigate what appeared to be a mysterious overdose. The case had many of the hallmarks of a typical fentanyl death. [NPR-WBEZ Chicago]

"Every sort of physical manifestation, like the foam coming from the mouth and nose, as if they had an overdose," Rutherford said. "Their blood tested negative for any substance, which was very odd."

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Her team was stumped, so Rutherford expanded the testing, looking for new compounds. "That's where we found the cychlorphine," she told NPR, referring to one of the incredibly potent synthetic opioids spreading fast in the U.S. street drug supply.

"This is the first time we've seen it in South Carolina, which is very scary because none of us knew to test for it."

Experts say the U.S. addiction crisis is evolving fast, in ways that appear both hopeful and incredibly dangerous. The peril comes from a street drug supply that chemists now describe as a "synthetic soup."

Where once most drug users mostly consumed plant-based substances such as cocaine and heroin, drug gangs and cartels have shifted to producing and selling synthetic substances made from industrial chemicals.

Fentanyl and methamphetamines have been around for years. Now, illicit chemists are adulterating batches of street drugs with a fast-changing and often baffling mix of compounds, ranging from Novocaine to a stabilizer used in plastics manufacturing called BTPMS.

"Why those in particular are being put into the drug supply is a bit of a medical mystery at this point," said Nabarun Dasgupta, a researcher who studies street drugs and overdose patterns at the University of North Carolina.

"We're encountering something we've never seen before"

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The House unanimously signed off last week on a proposal intended to prepare hospitals for potential infectious disease outbreaks.

The bill from Rep. Nicolle Grasse, D-Arlington Heights, tasks hospitals with developing and implementing comprehensive interventions to prevent and control pathogens of epidemiological concern.

It also establishes reporting requirements for hospitals with patients carrying pathogens of epidemiological concern.

“This commonsense change to hospital policy to align Illinois with medically recommended standards is the right step for public health preparedness,” Grasse said. “The medical professionals working in Illinois deserve a system that helps them do their jobs and continue to provide world-class healthcare to people across the state.”

The plan heads to the Senate for further consideration.

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Idaho had an 8.8% net migration rate of dentists between 2019 and 2024, the highest of any state, according to data from the American Dental Association.  [Becker's Dental & DSO Review]

See complimentary registration at Becker's 5th Annual Future of Dentistry Roundtable, taking place September 14-15 in Chicago. More>

Among all active U.S. dentists in 2019 and 2024, 7.7% moved states. Dentists who were less than 10 years out of dental school had a migration rate of 17.3% compared to 3.4% for dentists who were more than 10 years out of school.
In total, there were seven states with a net migration rate of dentists higher than 5%.

Here are the 10 states with the highest and lowest dentist migration rates between 2019 and 2024:

Highest migration rates
Idaho: 8.8%
Delaware: 8.4%
New Hampshire: 8.2%
South Dakota: 7.7%
Utah: 6.7%
Montana: 6.6%
Hawaii: 5.2%
Florida: 4.8%
Tennessee: 4.7%
Arizona, North Carolina: 4.6%


Lowest migration rates
District of Columbia: 5.6%
Massachusetts: 4.8%
Pennsylvania: 4.7%
Louisiana: 4.5%
Kentucky: 4.3%
New Mexico: 4.2%
Illinois: 3.9%
New York: 3.8%
Ohio: 2.8%
Missouri: 2.6%

At the Becker's 5th Annual Future of Dentistry Roundtable, taking place September 14-15 in Chicago, dental leaders and executives will gain insights into emerging technologies, practice growth strategies and the evolving landscape of dental care delivery, with a focus on innovation, patient experience and operational excellence.

Suggested reading:  HPI Perspectives, April 2026, Migration of U.S. Dentists Across State Lines , ADA. 

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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has reminded more than 2,200 medical product companies and researchers of the requirements to submit certain clinical trial results information to ClinicalTrials.gov. 

Companies and researchers often fail to disclose negative trial results, resulting in significant gaps in the public record and a publication bias that obscures the true landscape of drug development outcomes—overrepresenting successes and underrepresenting failures. This gap can also create a distorted perception of the safety and efficacy of medical products.  [US Food & Drug Administration] 

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According to an internal analysis, 29.6% of studies that are highly likely to fall under mandatory reporting requirements have no results information submitted to ClinicalTrials.gov. Studies subject to the mandatory reporting requirements include interventional studies with a U.S. nexus and an FDA-regulated product that are past the deadline to report; it excludes Phase 1 and device feasibility studies.

"Far too often, companies are suppressing unfavorable clinical trial results and keeping them secret from patients and the scientific community. Those sponsoring clinical trials have an ethical obligation to make results public regardless of the data's influence on the company's share price," said FDA Commissioner Marty Makary, M.D., M.P.H. "Too many clinical trial sponsors and researchers are failing to report their results, leaving important information unavailable to clinicians and other researchers. If you are a doctor deciding whether or not to prescribe a medication to a patient, you deserve to have the best data about clinical studies on that medication."

Certain clinical trial sponsors and researchers are required to submit clinical trial results information to ClinicalTrials.gov one year after trial completion. On March 30, 2026, the agency sent messages to more than 2,200 companies and researchers (associated with more than 3,000 registered clinical trials, including some that were publicly funded) that do not appear to have submitted required results information to ClinicalTrials.gov, or that may have not completed the National Library of Medicine's quality control review process. The messages seek voluntary compliance with requirements.

The FDA also may send Pre-Notices of Noncompliance and Notices of Noncompliance as part of risk-based compliance efforts related to ClinicalTrials.gov. The messages issued on March 30, 2026, represent an extra step the agency is taking to provide the relevant responsible parties with the opportunity to comply with federal law before the agency considers whether to take further regulatory action.

"I fully support this new initiative to increase the prompt publication—as required by law—of results information from interventional studies of the medical products we regulate," said Tracy Beth Hoeg, M.D., Ph.D., Acting Director of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. "We hope that the thousands of messages sent to sponsors and investigators reminding them to publicly report their findings will improve patient safety and keep researchers and the public better informed of benefits and risks of new and investigational products." 

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The Department of Public Health and other leaders in the field said they will use April to highlight the essential, but often overlooked, public health services. [Health News Illinois]

This marks the 3rd year that April has been deemed Public Health Month, an expansion of the national public health week.

The agency recently launched a public service announcement regarding newborn screenings, a critical first step in an individual’s health.

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“From newborn screenings and cancer prevention to food safety and community health, IDPH works to improve the health of Illinoisans,” IDPH Director Dr. Sameer Vohra said in a statement. “The scope of our programs allows us an opportunity to support people at every stage of life and in every corner of Illinois. We want people to know that when they have health ​​challenges, we are here as a trusted resource.”

Those awareness efforts are also taken on by local departments and organizations like the Illinois Public Health Association.

Tracey Smith, the associate executive director for public health practice at the Illinois Public Health Association, said one of their big focuses has been to bring more interest into the public health workforce.

That includes having over 60 applicants to intern for the organization, which Smith said is their largest number to date.

She also said the state is nearing certification for community health workers, which is expected to launch by this fall. Those workers will be able to reimburse their services through Medicaid, which Smith said will build a more sustainable workforce within public health.

“A sustainable funding level that will allow our CHWs to stay employed and stay working with the communities that they have trust and established relationships with as they navigate different needs,” she said.

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