David Rutherford, DO

David Rutherford, DO, is a practicing board-certified Emergency Physician and the National Director of Quality for USACS. He is responsible for driving continual measurable improvement in patient care for 11 million patients per year across 300 emergency departments. He serves as chair for the USACS National Peer Review and Quality Improvement Committee. Since joining USACS in 2016, he has helped build, grow, and evolve the USACS quality program.

Dr. Rutherford lives in Denver, CO, and is originally from Cincinnati, OH. He received his BS in Biological Sciences and Philosophy from Ohio University in Athens, OH, and his DO from the Western University of Health Sciences in Pomona, CA. He completed his EM residency at Doctors Hospital, serving as chief resident in 2007. Shortly after beginning clinical practice, he created a robust quality program including evidence-based best practice pathways, an individual clinician performance dashboard, and a web-based site- and practice-specific clinical reference tool, the Compass.

Dr. Rutherford has served as Chair of Emergency Medicine at Lutheran Medical Center, one of the highest volume emergency departments in Colorado. He is also a volunteer Physician proxy at Lutheran Medical. In this role, he facilitates medical decision making for critically ill patients who lack capacity to make their own medical decisions and have no surrogate decision maker.