Laura Applewhite

Laura Applewhite serves as a Contracting Officer within the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), where she manages the acquisition of critical services supporting the administration of Medicare, Medicaid, and the Health Insurance Marketplace. She plays a pivotal role in executing procurement strategies aligned with CMS’s mission to improve healthcare quality and equity through data-driven policy and technology modernization. Her portfolio primarily encompasses contracts for health insurance operations, actuarial services, financial auditing, and systems integration, ensuring compliance with federal regulations and operational efficiency across national healthcare programs. Ms. Applewhite maintains longstanding relationships with key contractors including Maximus Federal Services, Peraton Enterprise Solutions, Novitas Solutions, National Government Services, and General Dynamics Information Technology. These partnerships reflect a focus on large, established vendors with proven capabilities in claims processing, beneficiary services, data analytics, and IT modernization. Her contracting approach emphasizes performance-based outcomes, rigorous vendor evaluation, and sustained contract oversight to ensure service delivery meets stringent federal standards. Her procurement patterns show a 100% preference for full and open competition, with no set-asides designated for 8(a), HUBZone, SDVOSB, or other socioeconomic categories. This reflects a strategic emphasis on leveraging the broadest possible pool of qualified industry partners to meet CMS’s scale and complexity requirements, rather than targeting specific socioeconomic categories. Her primary NAICS focus areas are 524114 (Direct Health and Medical Insurance Carriers) and 541211 (Offices of Certified Public Accountants), indicating deep specialization in health plan administration, claims adjudication, and financial auditing services. She consistently procures technical solutions involving actuarial modeling, eligibility verification systems, fraud detection analytics, and compliance reporting—domains requiring high levels of regulatory expertise and operational precision.