Topeka ? Democrat Paul Davis on Wednesday campaigned directly to the families of people with developmental disabilities, vowing that if he is elected governor he will reverse a small part of Gov. Sam Brownback’s privatized Medicaid program known as KanCare that governs how those patients receive certain kinds of care.

“Patients, parents and family members are frustrated and disheartened,” Davis said. “Gov. Brownback was wrong to do this, and as governor I will fix his mistake.”

Davis was speaking about one small segment of the Medicaid population, people with intellectual or developmental disabilities, often abbreviated as the ID/DD population, who receive home or community based care. And he was talking about only part of the care they receive: nonmedical, personal care services such as help with bathing, shopping, house cleaning and other daily activities.

State officials say that group accounts for about 8,500 individuals out of the total Medicaid population of about 426,000 people. Officials were not able to estimate the cost of those nonmedical services for the ID/DD population because they are now included as part of the total package of services for which the new Medicaid contractors receive a flat per-person sum.

Davis also vowed to perform a “top to bottom review” of the entire KanCare program, although he only committed to changing the small portion dealing with nonmedical services for the ID/DD population.

In 2013, Brownback privatized the state’s Medicaid program, now known as KanCare, by signing contracts with three private insurance companies to implement a system of managed care for all patients, particularly the elderly and disabled.

The contracts call for the companies to provide each patient with a “care coordinator” who is supposed to work with families and health care providers to determine what services the patient needs and to make sure the patients receive those services.

But as soon as the program was introduced, advocates for the intellectually and developmentally disabled immediately called for “carving out” that population from KanCare, arguing that those people have unique needs that require special considerations.

For the first year, that group was carved out while the new KanCare model was still being ironed out. The group was folded into KanCare starting this year. Davis said the results have been “a disaster,” although state officials strongly denied that claim.

“We hear of cuts to services, delayed services and frustrating red tape,” Davis said. “KanCare has made these folks’ lives and the lives of their loved ones much more challenging.”

But Kari Bruffett, Secretary of the Department for Aging and Disabilities Services, said that hasn’t been the case.

“In fact, over the months from February through the end of July and into August, we actually had hundreds of increases in care plans because we eliminated the underserved list, which was part of the move to KanCare as well,” Bruffett said.

Officials at that agency also said that under KanCare, the claim denial rate for the ID/DD patients receiving in-home services is only about 2 percent, and that the average claim has been paid within six days.