Scott Hawig joined St. Louis-based BJC Health as its executive vice president and CFO in September 2025. Five months into his new role, Mr. Hawig is focused on one central issue plaguing healthcare: access.
“We have overwhelming demand for our services,” Mr. Hawig said during a Becker’s CFO+Revenue Cycle Podcast episode. “The severity of the issues we’re seeing in our community is rising.”
While regulatory changes, labor supply pressures and financial sustainability are also top of mind for Mr. Hawig, they’re “all under the prism of rising demand.”
Formerly known as BJC Healthcare, the 14-hospital system merged with Kansas City, Mo.-based St. Luke’s in 2024 to create a 24-hospital organization known as BJC Health System. The merged parties rebranded as BJC Health in late 2025.
“It was important for us to have a singular message on who [patients] are coming to see. It flows through to the culture of our people, to the quality we deliver, regardless of site, and to the way we believe we treat patients, our staff and put people first.”
Mr. Hawig said a significant driver of BJC Health’s demand is its aging population.
“Aging population is something that holds throughout the Midwest,” he said. “That is the rising amount of our volume, it is a rising amount of our demographic, the aging of populations we serve. It is central to how we think about deploying service and that consumerism, if you will, for that customer.”
Addressing the aging population is a particular focus for many health systems. At Lebanon, N.H.-based Dartmouth Health, CFO Wendy Fielding also highlighted this area of focus.
“Our demographics affect our payer mix,” Ms. Fielding told Becker’s in late January. “This impacts our revenue stream, which is shifting over time more and more to governmental payers like Medicare and Medicaid, meaning we expect our future payment rates to keep dropping. At the same time, knowing that we’re getting to a higher percentage of elderly folks, the demands for services are likely to increase, so I’m very interested in trying to figure out how to make this work.”
From virtual care offerings like electronic ICU monitoring to micro-hospital model strategy, BJC Health is actively finding new ways to bring care closer to its patients, regardless of where they live.
“Access looks a little different in each of those settings, from a rural community toward more of an urban community,” he said. “How you deploy primary care and what you can do virtually, it all looks and feels a little bit different. I put BJC as a leader in that camp, in terms of making sure our doors are open to that access, and being a leader in innovation, and looking for new business processes and technology in order to do that.”
With a background across both finance and operations, Mr. Hawig said his role extends well beyond the balance sheet, translating financial strategy into real-world impact for patients and care teams alike.
“It’s really that operator in training, and understanding the business,” he said. “In times we provide education … ‘Why do we account for things a certain way? Why do we do revenue cycle a certain way?’ Then a lot of times, we’re hearing feedback from the operators and helping translate the business side of that.”
