The rate is a fraction, and both halves are calls
A caller who dials 988 from a Kansas telephone chooses a service first. The federal agency that oversees the network describes the path: a person selects the Veterans Crisis Line, Spanish language services, or to be answered in state, and only then is the contact routed and the clock on time-to-answer started[3]. If nobody in the selected state picks up within a set time the contact rolls over to a national backup so that it is answered by somebody[3].
That description is the whole reason an answer rate needs reading carefully. It is not the share of people who got help. It is the share of contacts routed to Kansas that a Kansas center picked up, and the reports that publish it say in their own glossary that the values are calculated using calls unless otherwise noted and that they cover the local center and exclude contacts routed to or serviced by additional subnetworks those centers support[1].
One month, seven numbers
The Lifeline's administrator publishes a report each month with one row per state and territory. This is the Kansas row for July 2026. Every figure in it belongs to that month and to no other.
| Measure | Kansas |
|---|---|
| Calls routed in state | 4,167 |
| Calls answered in state | 3,789 |
| In-state answer rate | 91% |
| Calls abandoned in state | 364 |
| Calls flowed out to the national backup | 14 |
| Average speed to answer | 30.5 seconds |
| Average talk time | 15.8 minutes |
Volume rose faster than the rate fell
Four monthly reports were read for this article and the direction across them is consistent. Kansas centers were routed 3,302 calls in July 2025 and answered 3,028 of them, a rate of 92 percent[4]. In January 2026 the routed figure was 3,974 and the rate was again 92 percent[5]. In June 2026 it was 4,086 calls at 92 percent[6]. In July 2026 it was 4,167 calls at 91 percent[1]. Twelve months apart, the same month of the year carried 865 more routed calls.
Two of the other columns moved further than the headline rate did. Average speed to answer in Kansas went from 23.7 seconds in July 2025 to 30.5 seconds in July 2026[4][1]. Calls that rolled over to the national backup went from 10 to 14 across the same two months[4][1]. The reports give no reason for either movement and none is offered here.
A single month is a thin base for a trend, and four months is not much thicker.
What the reports do not cover
Text and chat are absent from the in-state call tables entirely. The nearest published Kansas reading of them is older and comes from a nonpartisan institute rather than from the network: the Kansas Health Institute, writing in October 2024, reported 13,664 texts and chats routed over the twelve months from August 2023 to July 2024, and put in-state answer rates for July 2024 at around 45 percent for chats and 51 percent for texts[7]. The same article gives 25,432 Kansas calls across that twelve-month window and an average in-state call answer rate of 88.5 percent for it[7].
Those are the institute's figures for a window that ended more than two years before this page was written, and they are cited as such. The current text and chat position is not in any document reached for this article.
The same article names the centers that were then taking Kansas calls: HeadQuarters in Lawrence, the Johnson County Crisis Line, COMCARE of Sedgwick County, the Wyandot Center in Kansas City, and HealthSource Integrated Solutions in Topeka, which it describes as providing backup support[7]. The Legislative Research Department's memorandum, writing of August 2023, counted four contact centers with a fifth in development, which is the same expansion seen a year earlier[8].
The statute, the fund and the report nobody could open
The 2022 Legislature put 988 into Kansas law as the living, investing in values and ending suicide act, running from K.S.A. 75-5964 through 75-5971[9]. The act created a dedicated fund in the state treasury and directed the director of accounts and reports to move $10,000,000 from the state general fund into it on July 1, 2022 and on each July 1 after that, reduced each year by whatever unencumbered balance the secretary certifies at the close of the preceding fiscal year[10]. The same section limits what the money may pay for, and bars spending it on people or entities domiciled outside Kansas[10].
The act also created a reporting duty, and that duty is where this article runs out of road. K.S.A. 75-5969 requires the secretary for aging and disability services to report to named standing committees of both chambers, on or before the first day of each regular session, on outcomes and key performance indicators, on the hotline's usage in the state, on the services provided in response to calls, and on what it will cost to keep running[11]. That report is the document that would settle how many Kansas contacts became a dispatched mobile team or a referral. It is the department's to publish, and the department's website refuses automated retrieval, so nothing from it appears on this page.
The clinic tier the fund reaches
What the fund may pay for beyond the call itself is set out in the same section: ensuring the efficient and effective routing of calls to an appropriate crisis center, and crisis outreach and stabilization services provided by directly responding to the hotline[10]. A Legislative Research Department memorandum stamped November 2023 counts 26 community mental health centers, which have been the main entry point to the system since the state's 1990 reform act and which act as the gatekeepers for admission to the state hospitals[8]. Layered over them is a Medicaid provider type, the certified community behavioral health clinic, which has to meet certification requirements and to offer a core set of services including crisis services, outpatient mental health and substance use treatment, and screening, assessment, diagnosis and risk assessment[8].
What can be counted is the caseload. The department's performance measure, headed Medicaid Beneficiaries Served through CCBHCs, reads 10,299, 26,023, 47,096 and 45,295 across the columns its 2026 session table labels 2022 to 2025 actuals, with 48,000 estimated for each of the two years after[2]. The table does not say whether those columns are fiscal or calendar years, so this sentence says what the column is labeled and stops.
Counting the clinics themselves is harder than it should be. The same memorandum says there are 20 certified in Kansas with six more scheduled for state fiscal year 2025[8], and that sentence carries no date of its own: the page stamps November 30, 2023 and elsewhere describes a grant the department announced in July 2024, so the word it uses for the present tense cannot be tied to a month[8]. The certification list is the department's to publish and its site refuses automated clients. Readers who want the rest of what this publication has on Kansas health will find every section on Health for Kansas.