The University Of Texas Southwestern Medical Center

The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, doing business as Southwestern Medical School, is a state-controlled nonprofit academic medical institution based in Dallas, Texas, that operates as a prime recipient and prime contractor for federal medical research grants and physician-services contracts, with no SBA certifications. The institution anchors its federal portfolio on highly specialized clinical services delivered to the Department of Veterans Affairs and biomedical research funded across the National Institutes of Health (NIH) portfolio.

UT Southwestern's customer concentration reflects its dual mission as an academic medical center and research institution. Veterans Integrated Service Network 17 (VA VISN 17) dominates the dollar ranking, accounting for $511.9 million in combined potential value across 384 awards—nearly 44% of the institution's total potential value from a relatively narrow set of contracts. This concentration stems from UT Southwestern's position as VISN 17's primary regional provider for on-site specialized physician services including neurosurgery, critical care anesthesiology, cardiothoracic anesthesiology, and plastic surgery. The Department of Health and Human Services National Institutes of Health leads by award count with 764 total awards spanning the NIH institutes; the National Cancer Institute, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute, and the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases together represent significant dollar volume. The gap between volume and dollars reflects NIH's research-grant structure: many awards carry modest individual values but collectively fund a broad research enterprise.

UT Southwestern's capability portfolio divides cleanly between physician-services delivery and biomedical research. On the clinical side, the institution provides on-site specialized surgical and anesthesia services to the VA system under single-award indefinite-delivery contracts—neurosurgery, critical care anesthesiology, and cardiothoracic anesthesia services represent the largest volume. Representative contracts include a $11.2 million ceiling indefinite-delivery contract for on-site neurosurgery physician services (VISN 17, July 2026 through June 2031), a $1.76 million single-award IDIQ for critical care anesthesiology (VISN 17, February 2026 through January 2027), and multiple $2.2–$2.6 million task orders under those vehicles. On the research side, UT Southwestern acts as prime recipient on over 764 NIH project grants spanning basic science, translational, and clinical research. Recent awards exemplify the breadth: $2.576 million NIAID cooperative agreement for a randomized controlled trial of tirzepatide for methamphetamine use disorder (August 2026); $1.699 million Defense Health Agency award for mapping driver enhancers in lethal prostate cancer (June 2026); $1.347 million NIMHD award for a family-level hypertension intervention trial in African American patients (July 2026); and a $1.648 million Defense Health Agency award investigating BRD4-regulated breast cancer brain metastasis (September 2026). The institution also holds sub-positions on high-profile clinical trials and research consortia, including the MATIC-2 clinical trial examining resuscitation strategies for traumatic pediatric bleeding (subaward from University of Pittsburgh) and the OPTIC RCC study (subaward from Vanderbilt).

Activity trajectory shows growth through 2024 followed by contraction. The institution received 225 awards in 2023, 380 in 2024, 351 in 2025, and 275 in 2026; this decline reflects the portfolio's reliance on annual physician-services task orders from VA VISN 17, which renew on fiscal-year cycles. The recompete cliff over the next twenty-four months is modest: 399 awards with completion dates between now and October 2028 carry a combined potential value of $9.2 million. The VA physician-services contracts, which anchor the dollar portfolio, run through June 2031 and therefore fall outside the near-term recompete window.

Service Contract Inventory data reveal limited scale on federal services contracts above the $150,000 reporting threshold. SCI-reported invoicing totaled $33 million across FY2022–FY2025, with FY2024 representing the peak at $12.1 million across 19.1 FTEs. The FY2025 figure of $9 million across 9.4 FTEs reflects partial-year reporting. Median government-paid hourly rates on SCI prime contracts run around $392.58/hr, with the 10th percentile at $21.47/hr and the 90th percentile at $676.38/hr—a wide spectrum reflecting the mix of administrative, technical, and highly specialized clinical labor. Across SCI-reportable prime contracts, the vendor performs virtually all work in-house; the average sub-hours share is 0%, indicating that subcontractor engagement on these federal services contracts is minimal.

UT Southwestern operates as a direct service provider under federal programs and does not position itself as a subcontractor at scale. Of the 4,593 total awards in the source portfolio, 3,924 (85%) are prime awards and 669 (15%) are sub-awards. On sub-contracts, the institution typically partners as a research collaborator or clinical site within larger consortia—for example, as a co-investigator on NIH-funded multi-site studies (Jackson Laboratory U19 on AAV vectors, Vanderbilt U01 on renal cell carcinoma biology) or as a clinical recruitment and data-collection site on multicenter trials led by Johns Hopkins, Northwestern, and the University of Chicago. On the contract side, UT Southwestern appears as a subcontractor on two Defense Health Agency contracts related to battlefield-relevant clinical research but does not operate a broad prime-to-sub pipeline.

The institution competes on full-and-open basis; it does not hold SBA 8(a), HUBZone, SDVOSB, WOSB, or other set-aside certifications. Its competitive posture reflects its character as a major state research university and VA-affiliated medical center. Federal agencies procure from UT Southwestern based on its clinical and research capabilities, specialized infrastructure, faculty expertise, and track record as a reliable implementer of complex biomedical research and healthcare delivery missions.