Alumni - Spotlight
Neha Choksi, MD
About MeI graduated UPMC radiology residency in 2011 and stayed on at Pitt for a split fellowship in abdominal imaging and women’s imaging. Upon completion, I worked for a year at a community practice in Florida. A year later, our ties to Pittsburgh brought my husband and I back to the area.
I joined a community practice north of Pittsburgh and have been there since. I practice general radiology with a focus in my subspecislty training. My training at pitt was very well rounded and has empowered me to perform many different tasks of all radiology specialities each day.
When I look back at my residency and fellowship I am filled with many emotions alongside endless memories. Though there are innumerable experiences that shaped me into a radiologist, I have found that the daily case conferences in the mornings, afternoons, and in each reading room really stuck with me. When I’m faced with tough cases I always recall from the pearls of these lessons. To this day, I can visualize the cases and hear the discussions that went along with them. I also always hear one of my mentor’s voices telling me to “do the right thing”. Those simple words guide on many occasion in so many different ways. But most importantly to always put the patient first, no matter what the circumstance. I am forever grateful to all my attendings that have helped me become who I am today, and for the success of my career.
During my free time I love just being a mom, and spending time with my husband and two wonderful boys.
Chad Ringger, MD
I completed my radiology residency at UPMC in 2011, and stayed for another year as a UPMC fellow, split between Abdominal Imaging and Women’s Imaging. Time has really flown by since I finished my training and returned to the Pacific Northwest (where I am originally from) to begin my career in Medford, Oregon. I joined a private practice group of about 20 radiologists, and immediately put my excellent UPMC training to good use. It has been rewarding use my subspecialty expertise in both abdominal and breast imaging in this medium sized community of about 200,000.
I have so many fond memories and experiences from my time in Pittsburgh. There was certainly a brief period of adjustment moving east, but soon my family and I fell in love with the city and entire region. My son is still a die hard Steelers fan, as his formative years were heavily black and yellow. Personally, I deeply appreciated all my impressive co-residents and fellows who always supported one another and inspired each other to succeed. I was always blown away by the excellent teaching of the attending radiologists in each division, and I use many of their tips, teaching pearls, and algorithms on a daily basis in my practice. My time at UPMC taught me to value each patient as if they were my family member, to go the extra step to provide excellent service to the ordering providers, and to value curiosity and continual learning. Those traits have helped make me the doctor I am today today, and have also helped me step outside my comfort zone to become a leader in my group and hospitals, serving on several committees and site directorships in the past few years.
In my free time, I enjoy raising my 4 children with my wife, Alisa, as well as much time spent volunteering with a local youth group. I dabble in all manner of sports and outdoor activities that living in Oregon offers (mounting biking, river rafting, skiing) but I’m most passionate about NBA basketball, backpacking, and travel - recently certifying in scuba and looking forward to an upcoming dive trip to Roatan, Honduras.
Shalini Chabra, MD
I graduated in 2008 from UPMC with Dr. Orons as the program director and did my fellowship in Abdominal Imaging under Dr. Mitchell Tublin. I consider myself fortunate to have received excellent training and a strong foundation that has served as a strong backbone for my career throughout. Even after all these years, I can still hear the voice of my mentors when I use the phrases they used as descriptors in my dictations. I was fortunate to work with Dr Michael Federle to write chapters for the first edition of Diagnostic Imaging by Amirsys and later incorporating it into Statdx. Right after my fellowship, I joined a private practice group east of Pittsburgh in Johnstown. The ultrasound training I received helped me become the head of ultrasound. I was making policy decisions including equipment purchasing decisions for the entire hospital system. Living in a small town and yet practicing high end radiology offered me the ability to balance family life and achieve professional success.
My husband’s job opportunity made us move to Las Vegas. Again, the great reputation of UPMC carries across the nation. I was able to find a new job quickly and gain the respect of my peers and referring physicians in a short time. I was working in a private practice group doing general radiology and a lot of procedures in a very high volume practice. I moved to Tucson recently and am currently sub-specializing in Abdominal Radiology. Two senior partners in this practice are UPMC alumni. The kind of cases I read now most of the day reminds me of being in the UPMC Presbyterian reading room again. It is always a pleasure to meet my fellow residents and attendings at conferences. The accomplishments of Pitt alumni inspire me. In my free time, I like to maximize my vacation time by travelling to faraway places, by taking a lot of photographs and by trying new cuisines. All this so far has only been possible due to the love and support of my kids, Om and Meera and my ever supportive husband, and an excellent Radiology training.
Geraldine McGinty, MD, MBA, FACR
John and I live in New York City's East Village, he is a tenured Professor of Genetics and Pediatrics at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. We like to travel and occasionally manage to do that together although both of us are on the road a lot both for our "day jobs" as well as serving on Boards for the Irish Government which takes us back to Ireland frequently. We love getting back "home" to Pittsburgh and are delighted to see how cool the City has become although we thought it was pretty cool when we lived there.
It's hard to believe it's almost 25 years since we finished residency, we don't run into too many of our former colleagues but it's always fun when we do. I generally manage to at least wave at a few people as we are rushing around at RSNA!
Biography
Dr. McGinty did her Medical training in Ireland at the National University and then came to the USA for residency at the University of Pittsburgh where she was Chief Resident. Her fellowship was in Women's Imaging at the Massachusetts General Hospital. While working at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx she completed an MBA at Columbia University.
She is an national and internationally recognized expert in imaging economics. She has served an advisor to the CPT Editorial Panel, the JCAHO and the National Quality Forum. She was Chair of the American College of Radiology's Commission on Economics and was the radiology member of the AMA’s Relative Value Update Committee from 2012-2016.
In May 2016 she was elected as the Vice Chair of the ACR's Board of Chancellors, the first woman to hold this office. She was until 2013 Managing Partner of a 70 physician multispecialty medical group on Long Island. In 2014 she joined the faculty at Weill Cornell Medicine (WCM) in New York City. As well as her clinical practice there she serves as Chief Strategy Officer and Chief Contracting Officer for the Weill Cornell Physician Organization’s more than 1400 members. Her role as lead negotiator for managed care contracts at Weill Cornell Medicine incorporates both traditional fee for service agreements as well as shared savings arrangements. She is also a member of WCM’s digital health strategy team.
Her published work has focused on payment models for imaging, most recently a bundled payment for breast cancer screening. In 2015 she was voted Radiology’s Most Effective Educator by the readers of Aunt Minnie, a radiology news site with more than 140,000 members. She has more than 7000 followers on Twitter.
Haresh Naringrekar, MD
It has been three years since graduating residency at UPMC, I currently am an Abdominal Imaging attending at Einstein in Philadelphia. After having been through three different institutions over the past 7 years, I have to say without a doubt UPMC is one of the best radiology training institutions in the country. It not only has prepared me well to handle anything thrown at me from a radiologic perspective, but it has also given me the tools for communicating well with other physicians and giving added value in interpretation. I would argue the second part of the previous statement is becoming more and more important as healthcare continues to evolve, and was definitely emphasized throughout my training at UPMC. I still keep in touch with many folks from residency, and while the training was tough I only look on those four years in Pittsburgh with fondness.
I am really enjoying my career thus far in academic radiology, and love the teaching aspect of training residents. This was instilled in me from my experience at UPMC, as not only were the faculty excellent radiologists, but also excellent educators. In addition to pursuing my career in academic radiology, my wife and I love to travel and enjoy Philadelphia with our dog, Lance.
Nikki Restauri, MD
Eight years ago, I graduated from the University of Pittsburgh Diagnostic Residency Program and the excellent training I received provided a strong foundation allowing me to grow as an academic radiologist and educator. As a radiology resident and then fellow in Abdominal Imaging at UPMC, I worked hard and had a blast with many of my co-residents now lifelong friends. Although residency and fellowship were times of fatigue and challenge, they were also filled with laughter, teamwork and personal growth. As we used to say - and I now know to be true- the nights go by slow but the years fly by. In addition to learning how to interpret images, my mentors at UPMC taught me what it meant to be a doctor.
Today, I pass on advice to my residents that Dr. Mitchell Tublin imparted to all his trainees when he advised us to “Do the Right Thing” when it came to patient care. This translated to being honest and always putting the patient first. I think one of the biggest gifts I have been given, and a trait that was cultivated during my training, is a sense of curiosity. A passion for teaching goes hand in hand with a love of learning and I have focused my academic career at the University of Colorado on medical student education. It is my mission to engender a sense of awe and wonder about the practice of medicine to students. I believe this is vital in an era where burnout is now epidemic. I live work and play in Denver, Colorado accompanied by my husband and 2 furry best friends, Nala and Honey Badger. Travel, photography, good food and good friends occupy my free time. I also believe in the art of doing nothing. One of my favorite past times involves sitting on the front porch watching the world go by – I learned this from my dogs. Oh yea, I also write both scientific articles and poems and have begun to publish in both arenas and have been learning how to play guitar for the last 4 years.