Vinay Rao, DO

Vinay Rao, DO, is an Assistant Professor of Medicine and an internal medicine-trained palliative care physician who cares for patients at Yale New Haven Hospital and Yale Cancer Center. Dr. Rao completed his fellowship in hospice and palliative medicine at Virginia Commonwealth University and residency in internal medicine at University of Connecticut.

Dr. Rao is the main palliative care physician in Yale's integrated and embedded GI onco-palliative/supportive care clinic in North Haven. The goal of the clinic is to serve as an extra layer of support for patients and their families by helping with symptom and treatment side-effect management and to improve patients' quality of life. With the help of interdisciplinary team members such as social workers, dieticians, psychologists, chaplains, and pharmacists, this clinic focuses on whole-person wellness (e.g., physical, psychological, spiritual, social, etc). The ultimate hope is to provide patients with palliative/supportive care earlier in their illness trajectory and alongside their medical oncology team.

Dr. Rao's research interests lie at the intersection of implementation science, quality improvement, and the use of patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) to improve patient care in the GI onco-palliative/supportive care clinic. He hopes to use patient-reported data to inform clinicians when patients' supportive care needs increase, to communicate this information to all members of the care team, and provide more timely supportive care for patients and their families.