LA CROSSE ? Residents in this Rush County community know they’re lucky.

When their longtime pharmacy — the only one in the county — closed at the beginning of this year, they were left driving a good 30 minutes to fill their prescriptions.

But in September, that drive was cut short when a local pharmacist gave up her commute to Hays to open Hoyt Health Mart Pharmacy in La Crosse.

The store has been busy since the opening; 160 prescriptions were filled just on one day. “Customers let me know how much they appreciate having somewhere local to go,” said owner and pharmacist Holly Hoyt.

The lack of a drugstore in a rural community isn’t unusual — there are 31 one-pharmacy counties in Kansas, and six counties have no pharmacy.

“It is a serious hardship on the community not to have a local pharmacist,” said Dick Stanley, director of the Clara Barton Hospital Foundation in Hoisington, a Barton County town that has been without a pharmacy since January 2006. The closest one is in Great Bend, about 10 miles away.

Stanley is on a task force formed with the goal of recruiting a pharmacist to their community. So far, they have been unsuccessful. A possibility of two pharmacy school graduates moving to the area appeared imminent earlier this year but fell through as the students chose other options.

Graduates often tend toward urban jobs, and those who were considering rural communities are lured away with signing bonuses and incentives.

Hoisington and La Crosse lost their drugstores when the owners sold their business to Walgreens and went to work for the corporation. Former owners said it was hard to turn down a cash buyer when that option might not be there when they’re ready to retire.

“Students are graduating with a lot of aspiration and a lot of debt. The idea of investing more money to start a small-town pharmacy isn’t appealing in a lot of cases,” said Hoisington’s Stanley.

Hoyt is a rare example of a pharmacist leaving an urban area to move to a small town. She grew up in La Crosse, and she and her husband moved from Wichita after they had their first child to be near family. She took a job at Hays Medical Center, commuting 30 minutes daily.

“We were fortunate to have someone interested that already lived in the community,” said Brad Penka, director of Rush County Economic Development.

The search could become tougher as possible state budget cuts threaten the expansion of the Kansas University pharmacy school.

State lawmakers approved nearly $50 million in new state funds to expand KU’s pharmacy school in Lawrence and add a satellite location in Wichita.

The six-year program now graduates 105 students a year. The expansion would add 45 slots in Lawrence and 40 more at the medical school’s teaching site in Wichita.