DHHS Division of Finance outlines budget detail, flags unfunded IT and e-signature needs

The Division of Finance at the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services told the House Finance Division 3 work session that it supports the department’s accounting and procurement functions and is responsible for federal draws, rate setting and contract administration.

The presentation led by Nathan White, DHHS chief financial officer, detailed staffing levels, workload and the division’s role in administering solicitations, RFPs and contract amendments. White told committee members the division’s accounting unit is 5676 and pointed legislators to the governor’s budget pages where operating detail appears.

White said the division centralizes rate setting for Medicaid and rebasing for county nursing facilities, performs the quarterly CMS-64 federal draw reporting and runs a grants-management function that assesses subrecipient risk. He said contract volume is substantial: the department’s contracting team processes roughly 700–800 contracts and amendments annually and that amendments can take from a month to three months while contracts with IT or complex risk provisions can take six months to a year.

White highlighted an analytical change driven by a business intelligence (BI) tool purchased in 2022. He said prior to that tool the department had lapsed roughly $45 million in federal funds in one year; after using the BI system DHHS reduced federal lapses to about $5 million in SFY 2024, which White described as materially offsetting general fund exposure. He called that BI capability a prioritized need and said the governor’s budget did not fund ongoing licensing for some of the tools used by finance and procurement.

Committee members pressed White on vacancy rates and organizational placement of specific contracts (for example, an EBT card contract moved into the Division of Finance because the contract manager sits there). The CFO said the division’s vacancy rate is about 11 percent and total headcount for the accounting unit shown to the panel was 157 in the governor’s budget.

Procurement and contracting work was a recurring theme. White said the contracting team has 34 FTEs and described Lean Six Sigma efforts to streamline processes and vendor training outreach. He also noted the department has struggled at times to reach vendor agreement terms, which can extend contract timelines.

Committee members flagged two specific technology priorities White and staff described as partially or fully unfunded in the governor’s recommendation: the BI/analytics environment that supports federal draw and maintenance-of-effort monitoring, and a DocuSign electronic signature service that accelerated contract execution during the pandemic. White said DocuSign “has definitely accelerated the processes,” and warned that losing it would force the department and its vendors to find workarounds that would slow contracting.

Ending note: White asked members to keep the BI and e-signature investments in mind as they consider funding tradeoffs; he said those items have tangible effects on federal drawdown, contracting speed and general-fund savings.