Hundreds of highly qualified medical students could be absent from Illinois teaching hospitals starting in July because of delays in processing their licenses, the result of a dispute between lawmakers and the medical community about how to fund the state office that issues licenses for physicians and doctors-in-training. Thousands of applications are submitted by medical residents every spring for temporary licenses. But the office that handles those applications, the Department of Financial and Professional Regulation's medical unit, slashed more than half its employees last month because of financial woes.
