CHEYENNE - State officials are expecting brisk competition for physician recruitment grants available through a new program authorized by the Legislature last winter.

One of the applications will be for one physician for Crook County Hospital at Sundance.

The county has four physicians but two are a married couple who work part time. In addition, the county has a physician's assistant and a nurse practitioner who work in the county's three clinics at Moorcroft, Hulett and Sundance, hospital administrator Doris Brown said Monday.

"They're getting to the burnout stage," Brown said.

The physicians work in the clinic and then are on call for the hospital as well.

One physician was on medical leave.

"It's been a little stressful this summer," Brown said.

It's also been hard on patients because a physician must leave the clinic and waiting patients to care for emergencies at the hospital.

Crook County has about 6,000 residents and is growing as people from South Dakota move into Sundance for lower property values and taxes and Moorcroft picks up the outflow from Gillette, Brown said.

The Legislature allocated $400,000 for the new program and specified that the Department of Health not use the money for anything except for physician recruitment and to include the sum in the next budget.

Brown said Monday she is preparing an application for money to recruit one physician. Sept. 15 is the deadline for applications to be submitted.

The grants are for a maximum of $80,000 each.

Pennie Hunt of the Wyoming Health Resources Network, which is handling the applications, said last week that the office phone had been ringing for the previous two days from potential applicants.

The Rural and Frontier Health Division of the Wyoming Department of Health will award the grants by the end of September, said Jeff Hopkins.

The Wyoming Health Care Commission in a January 2008 report listed eight counties with top priority because they have fewer than one physician per 1,000 population, Hopkins said Monday.

In addition to Crook County, they are Big Horn, Carbon, Niobrara, Platte, Sublette, Washakie and Weston Counties.

In the second ranking are eight or nine counties with fewer physicians than the state average of 1.94 per 1,000 residents.

The national average is 2.81 physicians per 1,000 residents.

Park County is tied with that ratio.

Teton County tops the national average with 4.1 physicians per 1,000 population.

Hopkins said the department will contract with the hospitals, clinics or private physicians who will conduct the recruiting.

The recruited physician must agree to provide medical care for at least two years in under served areas of the state or to pay the state back the grant money at 10 percent interest.

The grants allowed by the law include:

- up to $10,000 to the recruiting entity for each recruited physician.

- up to $20,000 in relocation expenses.

- up to $10,000 per year for medical malpractice insurance premiums for two years.

- a $30,000 maximum signing bonus.

The Legislature also eliminated the required 25 percent matching community grant for the separate physician and dentist loan repayment program.

"Some of our more challenged communities had trouble coming up with the match. So we expect more physician applicants because it's no longer required," Hopkins said.

The department plans some advertising to get the word out about the revised program, he said.

It repays a physician or dentist up to $30,000 per year on their outstanding educational loans.

The loan repayment program is online at WDH.state.wy.us/rfhd/rural/loan.html.

Applications for the physician recruitment grants are available at www.WHRN.org (under the link hiring sites), or at http://health.wyo.gov/rfhd/rural/Physician_Recruitment.html.

Contact Joan Barron at (307) 632-1244 or joan.barron@trib.com