Michelle Hurst
Principal
Health Management Associates
Atlanta, GA
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Michelle Hurst is a healthcare strategy and operations executive with over 25 years of clinical, public health, maternal and child health, and healthcare consulting experience. Specializing in developing and deploying innovative healthcare solutions and care delivery models, she delivers quantifiable results that enhance accessibility, equity and effectiveness in healthcare services.
Michelle has served as the Public Health State Office nurse director and has held senior roles at several healthcare consulting agencies. Her extensive experience spans working with both payers and providers to optimize operations, integrate health information technologies (HIT), and develop strategic plans aimed at improving health outcomes and achieving organizational goals.
Before joining Health Management Associates, Michelle was a managing director with the MKehr Advisory Group, where she served as a subject matter expert to various healthcare organizations to generate sustainable market growth and improve patient outcomes. For a Dual-Eligible Special Needs Plan (D-SNP), Michelle created and executed a comprehensive Model of Care strategy that ensured compliance with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS), enhanced care coordination, and facilitated a 35 percent expansion of services for dual-eligible beneficiaries. For a state public health department, she developed and led a strategic health equity audit that achieved a 25 percent improvement in care quality for marginalized communities and set a new standard for inclusive healthcare practices recognized at the state level.
The healthcare innovations and model optimizations Michelle delivers consistently provide measurable results. A care variation management strategy she implemented achieved a 35 percent reduction in resource misuse and generated $8 million in cost savings across an enterprise’s care delivery services. For clients, Michelle has designed and implemented a multidisciplinary rounds program that contributed to a 10% reduction in length of stay and a value-based care model that led to a 25 percent improvement in quality metrics and $8 million in saved hospitalization costs. She also produced a hybrid care model that combined telehealth and in-person visits that was successfully adopted by more than 20 health systems, enhancing patient accessibility by 40 percent and reducing care costs by 30 percent.
Leveraging her knowledge of technological advancements, Michelle integrates innovative solutions with digital tools and processes to drive results. She has extensive experience implementing clinical documentation improvement (CDI) programs, increasing Case Mix Indexes (CMIs) and increasing annual revenues by as much as $14.4 million. Michelle designed a clinical governance and operations framework that analyzed and restructured the cost of care models for an academic health system. This resulted in a 20 percent reduction in operational costs by allowing for strategic resource allocation and process optimization.
In addition to her focus on digital transformation and health equity, Michelle prioritizes maternal and child health initiatives, public health education and community outreach programs. Working with multi-hospital systems, she has successfully instituted education programs that reached over 5,000 individuals. These programs increased the participants’ health literacy rate by 35 percent and achieved a 40 percent improvement in disease management, medication adherence, and preventative care comprehension.
Michelle earned her Master of Public Health from Emory University and her bachelor’s degree in nursing from Mercer University. She also has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Georgia. Michelle is a registered nurse and a certified Lean Six Sigma green belt.
Michelle is married to a wonderful man, and they have two adult children and two sweet fur babies together. She enjoys spending time with her family, friends and traveling internationally.