Inundated with medical-marijuana patient applications, Colorado’s health department has changed one way it handles the flood of paperwork.

Starting April 1, health department workers will no longer review applications submitted at the department’s walk-up window to make sure they are complete before accepting them. In a news release, the health department said that practice unfairly gave walk-up applications priority and contributed to a backlog of mailed-in applications.

The department has been receiving about 1,000 applications per workday, nearly quadruple the number it was receiving per day over the summer, according to the release.

The lag between when an application is received and when a license is issued has now stretched to six months. The department is awaiting legislative approval of funding to add temporary workers to help with the backlog.

John Ingold, The Denver Post