Tom Engels

Pandemic-program role: HRSA Administrator, the agency head who directed management of the $175 billion COVID-19 Provider Relief Fund.
Institution · office: Department of Health and Human Services · Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) · Administrator · Type: political (presidential appointee)
Tenure (relief-relevant): HRSA Administrator from November 2019 until January 2021; returned as Administrator in March 2025.

Identity and role

Thomas J. Engels is the administrator of the Health Resources and Services Administration, the HHS agency that funds health centers, the National Health Service Corps and other programs for patients who are geographically isolated or economically or medically vulnerable. HRSA's biography says he is the first person appointed HRSA administrator twice by a president serving nonconsecutive terms. Under him, according to the agency, HRSA serves more than 31 million people through 1,400 health centers.

Biography / career arc

Engels is a Wisconsin native with a bachelor's degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His early posts were political and state-level: deputy press secretary to Governor Tommy Thompson, communications director for the Wisconsin Senate Republican Caucus, government affairs director for the Wisconsin State Telecommunications Association, and vice president of public affairs at the Pharmacy Society of Wisconsin.

From 2015 to 2019 he was deputy secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Health Services, a department with more than 6,000 employees and a $12 billion budget, and sat on the governor's task force on opioid abuse. He became HRSA administrator in November 2019. After leaving in January 2021 he was elected sergeant-at-arms of the Wisconsin State Senate, a nonpartisan constitutional office, in 2021 and re-elected in 2023 and 2025.

Pandemic-relief / PPP-EIDL role

HRSA's biography says Engels "directed the management of the historic $175 billion COVID-19 Provider Relief Fund" and served on the White House Coronavirus Task Force. The fund, created in March 2020, paid hospitals and other providers for pandemic expenses and lost revenue. HHS set aside $50 billion of it for the first general distribution, to providers that had billed Medicare fee-for-service in 2019.

The HHS Inspector General audited that first distribution: about $48 billion paid to 323,498 providers between April 10 and December 17, 2020, while Engels ran HRSA. It found that HHS and HRSA did not ask providers for documents supporting the revenue losses they reported for March and April 2020, did not subtract automatic payments to subsidiaries when calculating later payments, and set no deadline for returning rejected payments. The thresholds for manual review were set so that 2 percent of providers got one. HRSA agreed with all five recommendations, including that it consider reviewing 189 providers identified for manual review.

GAO counted the result in September 2023: $135 billion in payments that providers kept as of May 2023, about $84 billion of it to hospital-based systems and hospital-affiliated providers. HRSA had set time frames to recover most of $1.36 billion still owed but none, until August 2023, for $250 million in overpayments, unused payments and payments from noncompliant providers. Payments stopped in June 2023, when the fund's remaining unobligated money was rescinded.

Their own relief

No PPP or EIDL loan, Provider Relief Fund payment or other pandemic-relief receipt to Engels personally, or to a company he controls, appears in the HRSA, Inspector General or GAO documents cited on this page.

Legal status / controversies

Engels has not been charged with a crime, and no civil enforcement action names him in the documents cited here. The Inspector General's findings on the first distribution's controls are addressed to HHS and HRSA and carry no penalty.

Where they are now (2025–2026)

HRSA announced his return as administrator on March 11, 2025, citing his work on the White House COVID-19 task force and on the Provider Relief Fund. He came back from the Wisconsin Senate's sergeant-at-arms post.

Sources held in this archive

Provider Relief Fund: The Formula That Paid Medicare First
Provider Relief Fund: The Quiet Audits After the Quiet $178 Billion

Seema Verma — CMS administrator in the same HHS pandemic-money story.
Christi A. Grimm — HHS inspector general whose office audited Provider Relief Fund payments.