How to Pay for a Walk-In Tub or Stair Lift in Tennessee: CHOICES, VA Grants & Assistance Programs (2026)

Tennessee's best-funded route to a paid-for grab bar, wheelchair ramp, or bathroom modification is the TennCare CHOICES program, which covers "minor home modifications" up to $6,000 per project and $20,000 per lifetime for members in CHOICES Groups 2 and 3. Veterans have a separate federal route (the VA's HISA grant, up to $6,800), and rural homeowners 62+ can tap USDA Section 504. One thing none of these are: Medicare — which does not pay for walk-in tubs or stair lifts.

The funding stack for Tennessee, at a glance

Most Tennessee families end up combining programs rather than finding one that pays for everything. Here is the realistic 2026 stack, from largest to smallest, with the published dollar limits — each verified against the official source linked in its row.

TennCare CHOICES: the minor home modifications benefit

CHOICES is TennCare's long-term services and supports program — the managed-care program that lets people who qualify for nursing-home-level care (or who are at risk of needing it) receive services at home instead. Its "Minor Home Modification" benefit is the most generous state-administered home-modification money available to non-veteran Tennesseans, and it explicitly covers changes "that will help you get around more easily and safely like grab bars or a wheelchair ramp."

Which CHOICES groups qualify

CHOICES has three groups, and only two of them get the home-modification benefit. Per the TennCare CHOICES page (tn.gov):

• Group 1 — people of any age receiving care in a nursing home. Home modifications are not part of this group's benefit package (the member isn't living at home).
• Group 2 — adults 21+ with physical disabilities and seniors 65+ who qualify for nursing-home care but choose to receive home- and community-based services instead. Minor home modifications: covered.
• Group 3 — adults 21+ with a disability and seniors 65+ who don't yet meet nursing-home level of care but still need support to stay at home ("at risk"). Minor home modifications: covered — and notably, the benefit is not counted against Group 3's overall annual service limit.

The published caps (verified on tn.gov)

The CHOICES Member Benefit Table (last updated March 2026) publishes three stacked limits on the Minor Home Modification benefit:

• $6,000 per project
• $10,000 per calendar year (January 1 – December 31)
• $20,000 per lifetime

Practical translation: a walk-in shower conversion, a modular wheelchair ramp, or grab-bar-and-widened-doorway package usually fits inside one $6,000 project. A full walk-in tub install at typical retail pricing often does not — which is why care coordinators frequently steer members toward a curbless roll-in shower instead: it accomplishes the same safe-bathing goal, usually fits the cap, and is what the benefit was designed around. Stair lifts sit in a gray zone; whether a specific lift is approvable is decided case-by-case by your health plan against medical necessity, so ask your care coordinator before you accept any quote. The same benefit table also lists a separate Assistive Technology benefit (up to $900 per calendar year) and an Enabling Technology benefit (up to $5,000 per calendar year) that can cover smaller safety devices without touching the home-modification caps.

The approval path runs through your health plan, not a contractor

CHOICES is delivered through TennCare's managed care organizations — BlueCare Tennessee (888-747-8955), UnitedHealthcare Community Plan (800-690-1606), and Wellpoint, formerly Amerigroup (833-731-2153). The sequence that actually gets a modification paid for:

1. Get into CHOICES. If you're not already on TennCare, call your local Area Agency on Aging and Disability at 1-866-836-6678 — the statewide number routes you to the AAAD for your county, which handles CHOICES screening and intake. Already a TennCare member? Call the number on your health plan card instead.
2. Get a care coordinator. Once enrolled in Group 2 or 3, your MCO assigns a care coordinator who builds your person-centered support plan. Home modifications must be in that plan.
3. The MCO authorizes and arranges the work. The modification is approved as medically necessary by the health plan, which contracts the vendor. Do not sign a contract with a tub or ramp company first and expect reimbursement — CHOICES doesn't work that way, and door-to-door "Medicaid will pay for this" sales pitches are a known scam pattern.

Veterans: the VA HISA grant, with a real Knoxville stair-lift example

The VA's Home Improvements and Structural Alterations (HISA) benefit pays for medically necessary alterations to a veteran's home — and unlike CHOICES, it doesn't care about your income, and it works for renters too (with a notarized permission letter from the landlord). The lifetime amounts, per va.gov:

• Up to $6,800 — for veterans whose disability is service-connected, or non-service-connected if the veteran has a service-connected rating of at least 50%
• Up to $2,000 — for other eligible veterans with non-service-connected disabilities

To apply you need a VA physician's prescription (diagnosis, medical justification, and a description of the project), VA Form 10-0103, an itemized contractor estimate covering labor, materials, permits and inspections, and a color photo of the area to be modified. Applications go through the Prosthetics department at your VA medical center — for East Tennessee that's the VA's Knoxville outpatient clinic under the Mountain Home (Johnson City) system.

Veterans with severe service-connected disabilities affecting mobility may also qualify for the much larger SAH/SHA disability housing grants (va.gov) — a different program with its own eligibility, worth checking before settling for HISA alone.

Rural Tennessee homeowners 62+: USDA Section 504

The USDA Section 504 Home Repair program serves very-low-income homeowners (household income below 50% of the area median for your county) in eligible rural areas:

• Grants up to $10,000 lifetime — but only for homeowners age 62 or older who cannot repay a loan, and only to remove health and safety hazards. Accessibility work like a wheelchair ramp or bathroom safety modification qualifies; a luxury tub upgrade does not. If you sell the home within 3 years, the grant must be repaid.
• Loans up to $40,000 at a fixed 1% interest over 20 years, for any age — repayable, but at terms no bank matches.
• Loan and grant can be combined for up to $50,000 of assistance.

County eligibility: most of Tennessee's land area qualifies as rural — the exclusions are the urbanized cores around Nashville, Memphis, Knoxville, Chattanooga, and the larger mid-size cities. Eligibility is decided by the property's exact address, not the county name, so check yours in two minutes on the USDA property eligibility map, then contact the USDA Rural Development Tennessee state office. Plenty of addresses just outside the metro rings — Maryville, Crossville, Lawrenceburg, most of West Tennessee outside Memphis — are eligible.

The fallback layer: TTAP and your Area Agency on Aging & Disability

Tennessee Technology Access Program (TTAP)

TTAP (tn.gov), run by the Tennessee Department of Human Services, is the state's assistive-technology program — call (800) 732-5059. It isn't a cash grant, but its four core services solve real problems the grant programs leave behind:

• Funding assistance — help identifying and applying to funding sources for a specific device;
• Device demonstration — try equipment (including bath and transfer equipment) before anyone spends money;
• Device loan — borrow equipment free while you wait on a CHOICES or HISA approval;
• Device reutilization — refurbished donated equipment, which is how families find working stair lifts and transfer systems at a fraction of retail.

Area Agencies on Aging & Disability (AAAD)

Tennessee's nine regional AAADs, coordinated by the Tennessee Commission on Aging & Disability (tn.gov), are the single front door for all of this: one call to 1-866-836-6678 reaches your regional office. The AAAD screens you for CHOICES, runs state-funded in-home support programs for people who don't qualify for TennCare, and keeps the local list of nonprofit ramp-building programs, church volunteer builds, and county-level repair funds that never show up in a Google search. If you've read this far and still don't know which program fits, this phone call is the next step.

Frequently asked questions