(a) If the Graduate Medical Education Residency Expansion Board determines that the number of first-year residency positions proposed by eligible applicants under 6 CAR § 373-104 exceeds the amount of funding appropriated for the planning grants, the board:

1. (1) May give priority for up to fifty percent (50%) of the funded first-year residency positions to be in:

   1. (A) Primary care; or
   2. (B) A field in which this state has less than eighty percent (80%) of the national average of physicians per one hundred thousand (100,000) people, as determined by the board, based on the Association of American Medical Colleges State Physician Workforce Data Report; and
2. (2) Shall not reduce planning grant amounts awarded for each resident position but may proportionately reduce the number of positions funded for each graduate medical education program.