Emily K. Hurst, DO
White Lake, Michigan
Emily K. Hurst, DO, is AOA board-certified in critical care medicine, internal medicine, and hospice and palliative care medicine, as well as a certified healthcare ethics consultant through the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities (ASBH). Dr. Hurst is a physician leader at Henry Ford Health, where she developed and implemented the health system’s virtual intensive care unit (vICU) program while continuing to practice as a bedside intensivist. She has remained at the forefront of virtual care innovation, leading the design of additional inpatient virtual programs to extend specialized clinical expertise, enhance care coordination and improve outcomes across diverse patient populations and care settings.
Dr. Hurst’s leadership has included the creation of multidisciplinary initiatives focused on reducing readmission risk, advancing goals-of-care conversations and advance care planning, managing critically and medically complex patients, and improving the overall patient experience. For more than two decades, Dr. Hurst has led healthcare ethics initiatives. Her work reflects a particular interest in navigating the complex clinical, ethical and human dimensions of critical and serious illness, with an emphasis on patient-centered decision-making and thoughtful interdisciplinary collaboration.
Concurrently, Dr. Hurst has served as medical director of the ICU for Avel eCare, a national telehealth organization. In this role, she has worked closely with hospitals and healthcare communities to identify local needs and develop innovative virtual critical care models that expand access to intensivist expertise. Her efforts have supported the implementation of virtual health services across numerous hospitals and communities nationwide, with a focus on improving clinical outcomes, strengthening operational performance and extending high-quality critical care to patients regardless of geographic location.
Dr. Hurst has served as clinical faculty of Michigan State University since 2006 and is medical director of Canterbury on the Lake Retirement Community in Waterford, Michigan. Her commitment to the care of older adults began during her tenure as a geriatric internist with the internal medicine physician acute care team in the greater Detroit area. During this time, she also served as an internal medicine program director for the Detroit Wayne County Health Authority, helping lead the nation’s first Internal Medicine residency program based within Federally Qualified Healthcare Centers (FQHC) rather than traditional hospital-based training environments. This work strengthened her commitment to innovative models of education, community-based medicine and care for underserved and aging populations.
Dr. Hurst has served as a seated member of the AOA House of Delegates annually since 2001. She joined the AOA Board of Trustees in 2020 and remains on the Michigan Osteopathic Association (MOA) Board of Trustees as a past president. Through her state and national leadership roles, she has been actively engaged in advancing healthcare policy, telehealth, clinical innovation, physician leadership and the continued evolution of osteopathic medicine.
Dr. Hurst’s professional interests encompass virtual and digitally enabled care delivery, critical care medicine, clinical and organizational innovation, healthcare ethics, leadership development, mentorship, advocacy and the creation of sustainable models that bring high-quality, compassionate care to patients and communities.
Back to Leadership