The Illinois Dept. of Healthcare and Family Services (HFS) is currently conducting IMPACT Medicaid provider revalidations. Providers in the September cohort must complete IMPACT revalidations by TOMORROW, Tuesday, Sept. 30. 

Completing this information is necessary to continue receiving Medicaid reimbursement. If you are in this revalidation cycle and do not submit your revalidation information by Sept. 30 you will be disenrolled from the IMPACT system and cannot receive retroactive enrollment. IHA urges all providers to check their revalidation cycle due date—including physicians and physician groups affiliated with your hospitals—and to check for any incomplete revalidations. 

NOTE: If a physician providing services at your hospital does not revalidate, your hospital will not receive payment for those services provided by that physician.
 
To check your revalidation due date, search the basic information page of your IMPACT enrollment. HFS has provided IHA with step-by-step instructions to check the status and due date of servicing providers that you can access here. The IMPACT Provider Revalidation website includes step-by-step instructions, a frequently asked questions document and a townhall webinar recording.

CMS: Medicare Advantage, Medicare Part D Expected to Remain Stable in 2026
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is announcing that average premiums, benefits, and plan choices for Medicare Advantage (MA) and the Medicare Part D prescription drug program are expected to remain stable in 2026. Average premiums are projected to decline in both the MA and Part D programs from 2025 to 2026, according to a CMS news release. 

CMS releases this key information, including 2026 premiums, benefits, and access to plan options for MA and Medicare Part D prescription drug plans ahead of the upcoming Medicare Open Enrollment, which runs Oct. 15 to Dec. 7.

More information about MA and Medicare Part D can be found here and here. Medicare open enrollment resources can be found here and here.
 
IHA Leadership Summit: AI Session Offers Perspectives and Insights
Illinois’ leading thinkers on artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare addressed topics ranging from vendor relations and AI’s role in clinical practice to data validation and sharing during a roundtable discussion at IHA Leadership Summit on Friday.
 
Newsweek Healthcare Editor Alexis Kayser moderated the session, “AI Leadership Roundtable: What’s Working and What’s Not Working (Yet).” She noted that nearly 66% of physicians reported using AI in 2024, according to an American Medical Association survey, compared with 38% in 2023, a 78% increase.
 
“Clinical notes are huge burden but essential part of training on how to diagnose,” said Abel Kho, MD, FACMI, Professor of Medicine and Preventive Medicine and Founding Director of the Institute for AI in Medicine (I.AIM) at Northwestern Medicine’s Feinberg School of Medicine. “We’ve been using ambient AI as the standard of care for two years but not for students, residents or fellows. We want them to have the underpinning skills in organizing how you think about the patient.”
 
For more experienced doctors, the technology “really reduces your cognitive burden,” Dr. Kho said. It has allowed for clear notetaking of a barely audible asthmatic patient though still can produce incorrect conclusions, such as suggesting a patient requested a double leg amputation.
 
Justin Brueck, Endeavor Health’s System Vice President of Innovation and Research, noted AI’s role in solving common healthcare concerns, including patient falls and workforce challenges. He said new nurses report feeling more confident with AI support on overnight shifts and nurses considering retirement are staying on longer.
 
While AI has the potential to address several issues, Brueck cautioned hospitals when dealing with vendors. He emphasized that AI should be able to solve future concerns: “Don’t bring me a solution to meet today’s problems,” he said.
 
Data validation and sharing are central issues, the leaders noted. “Has (the data) been validated by the vendor?” said Cheng-Kai Kao, MD, Chief Medical Information Officer and Associate Professor of Medicine with UChicago Medicine and University of Chicago Biological Sciences Division. He noted that his organization has AI scientists who do that work. “You don’t want to take it at face value. What works now is not to say it will work in the next version.”
 
Regarding data sharing, Jonathan Handler, MD, Senior Fellow for Innovation with OSF HealthCare, highlighted the tug of war over patient data.
 
“We’re all committed that in that tug of war the winner is the patient,” he said. “At the end of the day these models require tons and tons of data. If we want a system that knows how to think like doctors and clinicians, then we need to train it on lots of data. We have to think differently about data sharing—not taking advantage of patient data, that patients are safe and issues of privacy.”
 
See IHA’s Summit recap on our social media channels X, Facebook and LinkedIn.