Kansas Medicaid Penalty Divisor: $308.25 a Day From July 1, 2026

Updated August 27, 2026. Quick answer: Kansas uses a DAILY divisor, and for a newly determined penalty beginning on or after July 1, 2026 it is $308.25 per day. KDHE Policy Memo 2026-05-01, dated May 21, 2026, raised it from $287.14 per day, and no adjustment is made to a penalty period already established. The older Transfer of Property worksheet this page also reproduces, whose last row is $207.70 effective July 1, 2018, is out of date.

What Kansas publishes

How the penalty period is calculated

• The instruction sheet states the arithmetic in the state’s own words: “APPLICABLE AVERAGE DAILY PRIVATE PAY RATE: The average statewide daily rate of Nursing Facilities on the first day of the penalty period will be displayed. This date is divided into the amount of the resource transferred to calculate the number of days of the penalty period.” The word “date” in that second sentence is the state’s own slip for “rate”; it is quoted here as written.
• Kansas counts the penalty in DAYS. Most states divide by a monthly figure and get months; Kansas divides by a daily figure and the worksheet returns a “Number of Penalty Days” with a start date and an end date. Kansas drops any remainder after dividing: the whole number of the quotient is the number of penalty days.
• The applicable rate is the one in effect on the FIRST DAY OF THE PENALTY PERIOD. That is a third possibility, distinct from both the transfer date and the application date, and it matters in a state whose rate changes every July 1.
• The penalty period does not begin at the transfer. The worksheet asks separately for the “initial start date for LTC payments” — the first day the person would otherwise have been eligible for long-term care assistance had there been no transfer penalty, including any request for prior medical, and no earlier than nursing facility entrance, HCBS eligibility or PACE enrollment.
• For multiple gifts, Kansas totals them and uses the earliest date: “For multiple transfers, use the earliest date of the transfers… For multiple transfers, enter the TOTAL amount of the resources that were transferred.”
• The published rate series has a genuine dip in it, which is worth knowing before you assume a figure only ever rises: the rate fell from $138.41 on July 1, 2009 to $136.14 on July 1, 2010 before resuming its climb.

Once you have the figure above, the Medicaid penalty period calculator does the arithmetic. This page is the Kansas rate record; the calculator is the class parent.

What this page does not settle

• The newest rate Kansas has published is $308.25 per day, effective July 1, 2026 under KDHE Policy Memo 2026-05-01. The Kansas manual (KEESM 5724.4) tells workers to divide by the average daily NF rate and refers to the F-8 Kansas Medical Assistance Standards for the rate, so check the F-8 and the current policy memos for any later change. The $207.70 rate effective July 1, 2018 is only the last row of the older worksheet table above.
• There is an inconsistency inside the state’s own workbook, and you should know about it if you rebuild an old penalty. For the rate effective July 1, 2013, the Applicant sheet and the workbook’s own printed label both read $169.68, while the Recipient sheet’s corresponding cell reads $169.43. The table above follows the two sources that agree.
• None of the historical rates above is the right divisor for a transfer being assessed today. They are published here because the series is what Kansas actually released, and because rebuilding an older penalty requires the rate that was in effect then — not because any of them is current.
• A worksheet is not a regulation. This page reports what KDHE’s eligibility-policy worksheet and its instruction sheet say. Kansas Medicaid eligibility policy also lives in statute, in the state plan and in agency policy memos, and where those differ from a worksheet they govern.
• Nothing here decides whether a transfer is penalised at all. The worksheet assumes that question is already answered and only computes the length of the penalty.

Eligibility is decided by the state agency on the whole file, not by this one number. Nothing here is legal advice, and no one should transfer, retitle or give away property on the strength of a worksheet.

Sources

• Kansas Department of Health and Environment, Policy Memo 2026-05-01, May 21, 2026, Annual Change in Spousal Impoverishment Income Allowance, TOP, Funeral Cap, the source of the $308.25 per day figure
• Kansas Department of Health and Environment, Transfer of Property (TOP) Worksheet, file dated July 1, 2018 — the workbook containing the Average Daily Private Pay Rate Lookup Table
• KDHE Kansas Economic and Employment Support Manual (KEESM), July 2026 edition, 5724 Transfer of Property Penalty
• KDHE, Applicant — Transfer of Property Calculator Instructions
• KDHE Division of Health Care Finance, Eligibility Policy — Elderly & Disabled Medical, the index both documents are served from

The worksheet, instruction sheet and index sources above were retrieved and read against the state text on August 27, 2026. The KEESM section was read in its July 2026 edition. The $308.25 per day figure is from KDHE Policy Memo 2026-05-01 (May 21, 2026), read from an archived copy of the memo because the kancare.ks.gov address returned HTTP 403 when re-checked.