Nick Barto

Nick is president of BJC Health System, an integrated academic health system operating in two distinct regions – the East Region, which serves the St. Louis area and southern Illinois, and operates as BJC HealthCare; and the West Region, which serves the Kansas City area and eastern Kansas, and operates as Saint Luke’s Health System. Nick also serves as president of BJC’s East Region, BJC HealthCare.

Formerly executive vice president and chief financial officer for BJC HealthCare, Nick led strategic growth and integration initiatives including collaboration and alignment with Washington University School of Medicine. His responsibilities included the organization’s financial success, overseeing corporate and operational finance, data and analytics, managed care/value-based contracting, revenue cycle, supply chain, treasury and investments.

Nick joined BJC HealthCare in 2018 and played a critical role leading the system through the unprecedented financial challenges posed by COVID-19, helping ensure that it remained among the top-performing systems in the nation. He also worked with clinical and operational leadership to establish BJC’s Business Intelligence and Data Solutions group and led the partnership with Washington University to launch the data and research firm CuriMeta.

Prior to joining BJC HealthCare, Nick was senior vice president, corporate finance and investments, and chief financial officer for enterprise business lines at Catholic Health Initiatives (the predecessor to CommonSpirit Health), where he was responsible for the organization’s treasury and investment functions, operational and corporate finance, capital planning and payer strategy, as well as Catholic Health Initiatives’ senior living division, clinical engineering, real estate and physical asset services/construction. He previously held senior financial roles at Novant Health, McColl Partners, Lehman Brothers and The Wilkerson Group.

Nick earned a master’s degree in business administration from Columbia Business School and a bachelor’s degree in economics from Princeton University. He is a member of the Health Care Industry Council of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis and the board of CuriMeta. Previously, he has served on the boards and advisory committees of ExceleraRx Corp., Consonance Capital Partners, Centura Health, US Acute Care Solutions and Alta Partners, LLC.