Dr. Rao is an Associate Professor of Medicine in the Division of Nephrology at Columbia University, where she has been on the faculty since 2009. She is the Director of the Chronic Kidney Disease Program at Columbia. She is also currently the chief of Medicine at the Allen Hospital, part of the NYP system. Previously, she has been the medical director of several outpatient dialysis units. Her clinical interests are in pre-dialysis kidney disease. She also has an interest in caring for older adults with kidney disease, focusing on dialysis decision making and initiating a palliative approach for patients who choose to forgo dialysis for active medical management of their kidney disease. In addition, she is a member of the ColumbiaDoctors Hypertension Center, a multi-disciplinary center of excellence that provides high quality care and state-of-the-art diagnostic testing for patients with hypertension.

Dr. Rao has previously done work in health care disparities and chronic kidney disease. Her current research interests are in geriatric nephrology. She had a NIH grant to study the ideal vascular access in older adults preparing for dialysis. She currently is the site leader for a NIH funded study evaluating a tool to guide the decision making around dialysis in older and frail adults.