Close up image of a caretaker helping older woman walk

The Medicaid program in Tennessee is aggressively going after family homes to recoup some of the $1 billion the state pays for long-term care each year.

TennCare, the state’s Medicaid program, typically targets the family homes of nursing home residents who have died. By the time a nursing home recipient gets on TennCare, the resident’s family has spent down all of the family assets, except for the home.

But the state recently has stepped up its efforts to sell people’s homes. In April it hired a consulting firm to help find properties that deceased long-term care recipients passed on to their heirs without going through probate. The Tenncare Bureau also is looking to the state’s highest courts to extend the time that it has to petition a court to get the property.