Agency Snapshot: Department of Health and Human Services

The Department of Health and Human Services serves to enhance the health and well-being of Americans by fostering sustained advances in the sciences, underlying medicine, public health, and social services. The Department’s $1.25 trillion in budgetary resources ensures the operation of the Food and Drug Administration, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, National Institutes of Health, and Administration for Children and Families amongst many other organizations. Like other agencies, it is committed to pursuing this important mission while managing its finances effectively, which includes ensuring its payments are accurate, using only property it needs, and accounting for its finances properly.

CFO
Ellen G. Murray
website: 
hhs.gov

Key Initiatives

The Administration is eager to reduce annual improper payments and is working with Federal and State partners, Congress, and other stakeholders, to reduce the government-wide amount of errors without negatively impacting citizen access to needed programs. "Improper payments" occur when funds go to the wrong recipient, the recipient receives the incorrect amount of funds, documentation is not available to support a payment, or the recipient uses funds in an improper manner. The government must better ensure that taxpayer dollars are spent wisely and efficiently. You can learn more about our efforts to reduce improper payments at the newly launched PaymentAccuracy.gov.

The chart to the right depicts the agency’s progress towards its real property savings goal. More information about the nature of the savings can be found on this agency’s page in the Real Property section of Performance.gov.

Tabular View

Decision makers and the public must have confidence in the financial information provided by agencies in order to make good decisions about managing government programs and implementing policy. The results of the annual independent audit are one of the best ways to assess agencies’ financial information and recordkeeping systems. All agencies are working to improve their financial management in order to ensure that taxpayer dollars are used as efficiently as possible.

Tabular View