Eric D. Hargan served as the Deputy Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) from 2017 to 2021; he also served as Acting Secretary for several months in 2017-2018. HHS is the largest department in the federal government and has an annual budget in excess of $1.3 trillion and over 80,000 employees across 26 divisions. As Deputy Secretary, he oversaw the development and approval of all HHS, CMS, and FDA regulations and significant guidances; as well as the day- to-day operations and management of the department. From 2003-2007, Mr. Hargan served at HHS, including as Acting Deputy Secretary.

Mr. Hargan served on the Board of Operation Warp Speed, starting in Spring of 2020, helping to develop the project and coordinate HHS agencies. In the area of regulatory reform, he coordinated the comprehensive HHS telehealth response in 2020, including simultaneous regulatory reforms among three HHS agencies, enabling telehealth to grow by a factor of over a thousand in a few months. From 2017-2021, he initiated, sponsored, and led four agencies in the Regulatory Sprint to Coordinated Care, including reforms to the Anti-Kickback Statute (by OIG); the Physician Self-Referral Statute (or “Stark law”) (CMS); HIPAA (OCR); and 42 CFR Part 2 (SAMHSA) regulations.

In the area of innovation, he coordinated and led the successful launch of the interoperability rule by the HHS Office of the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology. In 2018-2019, he initiated, sponsored and led the Innovation and Investment Summit, a first-of- its-kind summit dedicated to bringing together top investors and innovators in U.S. healthcare with Federal healthcare leadership.

He received his B.A. cum laude from Harvard University, and his J.D. from Columbia University Law School, where he was Senior Editor of the Columbia Law Review. In between tours of duty at HHS, Mr. Hargan was a law partner in healthcare regulation, mergers and acquisitions, corporate finance, and government relations. He also taught at Loyola Law School in Chicago, focusing on administrative law and healthcare regulations.