Group: Persons with disabilities falling through KanCare's cracks

Kansans with disabilities are increasingly slipping through cracks in the KanCare system, denying them crucial services, advocates said Thursday.

The Big Tent Coalition, an alliance of advocacy groups, questioned why enrollment for physical disability services had dropped, while spending on those services had risen.

"People with disabilities are far too often getting lost in KanCare," said Rocky Nichols, executive director of the Disability Rights Center of Kansas. "KanCare has created new cracks in the system."

Nichols said fewer people are being enrolled for the physical disability services they need, though more money had been appropriated for that purpose.

Enrollment in the physical disability waiver has "fallen off a cliff," Nichols said, while per-capita funding to managed care organizations has increased.

From fiscal year 2012 to 2013, the per-capita funding rose 41 percent, Nichols said. Enrollment dipped 15 percent.

Coalition members blame the drop in enrollment and the waiting list on bureaucratic red tape they say is frustrating the efforts of people trying to access services.

At the same time, the coalition says people with traumatic brain injuries are having trouble gaining access to the appropriate services, too. Though the number of people receiving those services increased from fiscal 2012 to fiscal 2013, funding hasn't kept pace, Nichols said, and people who qualify for services wait month after month to receive them, though there isn't a waiting list.

Tammy Leach, a 50-year-old who lost an arm and sustained a brain injury in a car crash in 2011, said she passed an assessment last year that should qualify her for services, but she has yet to receive them because the state won't approve or deny her application.

"I have waited patiently for nearly five months," Leach said. "My crisis is a man-made crisis, created by the state of Kansas."