Kevin Boninblest, executive director of the Wyoming Board of Medicine, told the Joint Appropriations Committee the board's licensing system can no longer reliably serve physicians and physician assistants and that staff recently had to return to stuffing paper renewal forms for PAs "for the first time in 15 years." He asked the committee to approve a $710,000 exception request to fund a vendor conversion that includes an estimated $560,000 for conversion/overlap and about $150,000 in ongoing annual costs for the new licensing contract.

Boninblest said the board has robust special‑revenue balances because of strong licensing activity and that the board temporarily lowered some renewal fees to return surplus funds to licensees. He explained two licensing fee paths: for interstate‑compact applicants (where other states have already vetted providers) the board's cost is lower (about $325), while standard standalone applications incur more administrative work (about $400).

Committee members asked about scale, and Boninblest said the board licenses roughly 7,500 physicians and PAs combined but only about 1,400 physicians reside in Wyoming; the remainder hold licenses to serve via telehealth or other arrangements. He said the board has the revenue on hand and wants permission for immediate implementation to avoid further paper‑based processing and service interruptions.

The board also asked for a smaller DocuSign contract ($33,000) to preserve secure electronic attestations and for TRP items to be handled by ETS. The committee asked for timeline detail and vendor specifics as staff prepare markup language and procurement oversight.