Eric D. Hargan is the Founder and CEO of The Hargan Group, a full-service consulting firm with unparalleled experience offering regulatory guidance, public health innovations and strategic public policy solutions in the healthcare sector. He has 30 years of experience working for the public and private sectors and unique insight and experience working for the United States Government.

 

Hargan served as the Acting Secretary of the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in 2017-2018, and as Deputy Secretary from 2017-2021. From 2003 to 2007, Mr. Hargan also served at HHS in a variety of capacities, including holding the position of Acting Deputy Secretary. With over 70,000 employees across 26 divisions, HHS is the largest department in the federal government and has an annual budget in excess of $1.5 trillion. As Deputy Secretary, Hargan 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, while leading policy and strategy development.

 

He served on the Board of Operation Warp Speed, starting in Spring 2020, helping to develop the project and coordinate with HHS agencies. Also, in response to the pandemic, in March 2020, he launched the $175 billion Provider Relief Fund, overseeing it until July 2020, sending over $100 billion in relief to U.S. healthcare providers.

 

In the area of regulatory reform, he coordinated the comprehensive HHS telehealth response in 2020, enabling telehealth to grow by a factor of over a thousand in a few months. From 2017 to 2021, he initiated, sponsored, and led four agencies in the Regulatory Sprint to Coordinated Care, a four-agency project to reform regulations to enable better coordinated care.

 

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 (establishing national standards and prohibiting information blocking, among other things). 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.

 

In the area of public health, he convened and led the year-long Federal Quality Summit in 2019 which spelled out the pathway for further healthcare quality reform, announced in May 2020. He led the rural health initiative within HHS in 2019-2020, leading to reforms in telehealth expansion; rural broadband; a new reimbursement model for rural health; and many other initiatives across the Department. He served as Commissioner on the WHO’s High-Level Commission on Non-Communicable Diseases (2018-2019).

 

In between his times at HHS, Mr. Hargan was a partner at several national law firms in healthcare regulation, mergers and acquisitions, corporate finance, and government relations. Hargan received his B.A. cum laude in Philosophy from Harvard University, and his J.D. from Columbia University Law School, where he was Senior Editor of the Columbia Law Review.

 

He served as a Fellow at the Institute of Politics at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government in Spring 2025. In addition to teaching at Harvard, he has taught courses at Cornell, Loyola-Chicago, the University of Minnesota, and Vanderbilt. His editorials have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The Hill, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, and the Austin American-Statesman, among others.

 

He currently serves on the boards of University Hospitals, based in Cleveland, Ohio; Tomorrow Health, based in New York, New York; and HealthTrackRx, based in Denton, TX. He is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation and is a Fellow of the Health Evolution Forum.

 

Mr. Hargan was born and raised in Mounds, Illinois, and lives in Virginia with his wife, Emily. They have two sons.