Priorities in HHS’s FY 2024 $144.3B Budget Request

The HHS’s discretionary base budget authority shows a 13.6% increase over the FY 2023 enacted level.  The budget request also provides $1.7T in mandatory budget authority for FY 2024.

Deltek’s Federal Market Analysis team analyzed the budget request to identify funding and line items most likely to translate into future contracting opportunities. Top-level priorities in the HHS budget that could potentially trickle down to contracting opportunities include:

• $20B in mandatory funding for HHS public health agencies to advance science, technology, and core capabilities to prevent and prepare for future biological threats.
• $10.5B in discretionary funding to build public health capacity at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and at the state and local levels for surveillance, laboratory, and public health workforce capacities.
• $8.1B in discretionary resources for the Indian Health Service (IHS) and proposes reclassifying the entire IHS budget as mandatory in FY 2025. Also includes $1.6B in proposed mandatory funding in FY 2024 for Contract Support Costs, payments for tribal leases, and the Special Diabetes Program for Indians.
• $7.8B for the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to drive progress on ways to prevent, detect, and treat cancer.
• $1B dedicated to Cancer Moonshot activities across CDC, IHS, HRSA and FDA to reduce the cancer death rate by at least 50 percent over the next 25 years and improve the experience of people who are living with or have survived cancer.
• $2.7B for Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) workforce programs, including $947M in mandatory resources, to expand workforce capacity across the country.
• $7.1B for HRSA Health Centers, which includes $5.2B in proposed mandatory resources.
• $1.9B for the HRSA Maternal and Child Health programs.
• $22.5B in discretionary funds for HHS’s existing early childhood programs.
• $2.5B for the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) to support the development of high-impact research advances that drive real world impact with an initial focus on cancer and other diseases such as diabetes and dementia.
• $5.2B in new mandatory and discretionary Health Care Fraud and Abuse Control funding to provide oversight of Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) health programs, strengthen the HHS Office of Inspector General investigations, promote good governance, and protect beneficiaries against healthcare fraud.

Additionally last week, the administration released details regarding the FY 2024 IT budget request on the IT Dashboard. HHS is requesting $9.9B for IT, up 11% over FY 2023. 

Observations and priorities from HHS’s IT budget request include:

• $947M to support cybersecurity efforts, a 16.5% increase over FY 2023 levels.
• $3.4B for CMS IT investments to support Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP, the federal insurance exchange and program integrity efforts.
• Top increasing programs include IHS Modernization Health IT System and Support (+$998M) and IHS IT Management (+$42M).
• Top decreasing programs include CDC IT Systems Supporting Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion (-$34M) and Office of Inspector General Application (-$31M).
• HHS investments containing the most Development, Modernization and Enhancement (DME) funding include IHS Modernization Health IT System and Support ($1.1B), CDC OCIO Cloud ($157M)and CMS Federally Facilitated Exchange (FFE) ($146M).

For more information on the recent budget request, refer to Deltek’s new report “FY 2024 Federal Budget Request: Priorities and Opportunities.”