Brigham & Womens Hospital Inc.

Brigham & Womens Hospital Inc., operating as Department of Faulkner Pathology, is a tax-exempt academic medical center subsidiary of Partners Healthcare System Incorporated that serves as both a prime recipient and subcontractor on federal biomedical research grants and clinical service delivery contracts, with a heavy concentration in grant-funded research conducted across the National Institutes of Health portfolio and clinical services procured through the Veterans Health Administration.

The hospital's federal footprint spans biomedical research, clinical services, and specialized medical procedures. On the research side, Brigham & Womens holds prime recipient status on project grants across multiple NIH institutes—the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, National Cancer Institute, National Institute on Aging, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and others. Representative recent grants include $1.789 million from NHLBI for integrative computational-experimental approaches to identify rare coding variants influencing lipid metabolism and cardiovascular disease risk (awarded July 15, 2026, through June 30, 2028); $4.387 million from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences for epidemiological research on per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) exposure and breast cancer risk in women using the Nurses' Health Study cohort (awarded August 5, 2026, through August 4, 2030); and $3.001 million from NIAID for research into antibody somatic hypermutation and affinity birth mechanisms (awarded June 17, 2026, through May 31, 2030). On the clinical services side, Brigham & Womens holds a $5 million single-award indefinite delivery contract with Veterans Integrated Service Network 1 for lung transplant services (awarded July 1, 2026, with ultimate completion June 30, 2027), and has received multiple delivery orders under that vehicle and similar arrangements, including a $3.34 million order for lung transplant services (awarded July 1, 2026) and a $2.17 million order (awarded January 1, 2026). The hospital also provides bioinformatics research support to VISN 4 through multiple smaller delivery orders totaling approximately $1.59 million (awarded September 14, 2026, with completion through September 13, 2027).

Customer concentration is dominated by the NIH, which accounts for over half of recent awards across 940 base-level grants plus subsidiary institute-specific funding streams. Within that universe, NHLBI leads by potential value ($145.2 million across 593 awards), followed by the Veterans Health Administration's VISN 1 ($67.7 million across 111 awards), the Army Medical Command ($7.6 million across 63 awards), and NCI ($3.2 million across 379 awards). The spread across 115 distinct customer agencies reflects the breadth of federal research funding flowing through an academic medical center; the 55% coverage figure indicates that the top five customers account for just over half of award volume, with a long tail of smaller grants from specialty institutes and clinical-service procurements from regional VA networks and defense medical commands.

On the subcontract side, Brigham & Womens acts as a subrecipient under prime grants awarded to peer institutions across the NIH network and other federal research sponsors. Named primes include The General Hospital Corporation (Massachusetts General Hospital), The Children's Hospital Corporation (Boston Children's Hospital), Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Columbia University, Stanford University, the Broad Institute, and many others. Work performed under these relationships includes contributing laboratory analyses, providing clinical site services, conducting bioinformatics and statistical analysis, developing and validating imaging protocols, and managing biorepository infrastructure and specimen processing. For example, the hospital subcontracts under Columbia University's grant for investigator-initiated research on the SORL1 gene and Alzheimer's disease pathogenicity, providing structural biology and biochemical characterization expertise (sub-award dated August 11, 2026); subcontracts under the Broad Institute for virome investigation in diverse populations (July 31, 2026); and serves as a clinical site under Massachusetts Eye and Ear's cooperative agreement on gene therapy for dominant hearing loss, with the hospital's Gene Therapy Center responsible for IND-enabling studies and regulatory strategy (sub-award dated August 24, 2026).

The hospital operates predominantly as a grant recipient rather than a traditional federal contractor under GWACs, IDIQs, or BPAs. Its prime awards are concentrated in project grants (R01, R21, K08, U54, cooperative agreements) from NIH institutes and in service-delivery indefinite-delivery contracts with the VA system. Service Contract Inventory data shows SCI-reportable invoicing of $9.3 million across FY2022–FY2023 (the most recent years with non-zero data in the source), with hourly rates ranging from a 10th percentile of $46.33/hr to a median of $152.45/hr and a 90th percentile of $2,973.59/hr—a spread consistent with a mixed labor population ranging from laboratory technicians and research coordinators to principal investigators and senior clinical specialists. FTE counts have declined sharply from 25.1 in FY2022 to 1.6 in FY2025, suggesting either a shift in work mix toward lower-reportable-threshold activities or a reduction in SCI-eligible federal services activity; the source notes that SCI is a partial view excluding goods, grants, classified work, and non-federal revenue.

The hospital's prime footprint is 78% of recent awards, with 22% of awards received as a subcontractor to other prime recipients. Recompete exposure in the next twenty-four months stands at 392 awards (combined potential value $22.7 million), primarily grant renewals and continuation awards. Corporate structure places Brigham & Womens as a child entity under the parent Partners Healthcare System Incorporated (now operating as Mass General Brigham), a large integrated health system anchoring federal research activity across multiple campuses and clinical networks in Massachusetts.