Dr. Chopra received his training in Internal Medicine at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine and the Bronx VA Medical Center. He then completed a fellowship in health services research and health outcomes through the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars curriculum at the University of Michigan. Centered on the theme of patient safety, Chopra’s research focuses on preventing hospital acquired complications using intravenous devices as a lens for these efforts. His initial work challenged the status quo regarding safety of peripherally inserted central catheter devices, showing that they were an important contributor to patient harm in critically ill, general medical and ambulant patients. His research then transitioned to the creation and development of risk prediction tools aimed at quantifying and forecasting adverse events, providing clinicians for the first time with knowledge to maximize benefits and reduce patient harm. More recently, Chopra created appropriateness criteria for vascular catheter use, the Michigan Appropriateness Guide for Intravenous Catheters (MAGIC), that have become the evidence-based standard for selecting vascular devices. MAGIC is now the de-facto standard for intravenous device selection in hundreds of US hospitals and healthcare systems across the world. Implementation of MAGIC has been shown to reduce catheter-associated bloodstream infections, venous thromboembolism and catheter occlusion at US and international sites. Dr. Chopra’s ongoing efforts remain on understanding how best to implement MAGIC within clinician workflow and hospital electronic systems so as to make the right thing to do the easy thing to do for every patient, every time.
Chopra presently holds the Robert W. Schrier Chair of Medicine and is Chairman of the Department of Medicine at the University of Colorado at Denver.