OUR TEAM

Gabriella Farkas earned an MD degree with a neuroscience PhD at Semmelweis University, Hungary in 2013.

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As a PhD fellow she worked for the SCHIZOBANK initiative of Richter Gedeon Pharmaceutical, the co-creator of second generation antipsychotic cariprazine, approved by the FDA for the treatment of schizophrenia and bipolar I disorder in 2015. Her role as a PhD fellow, in the building of the biobank, was to screen and enroll patients with schizophrenia. In this function, she learnt to use a variety of psychiatric clinical diagnostic interviews, as well as neurological and psychiatric rating scales, ultimately developing an interest in evidence-based psychiatry. In this role she also studied the psychiatric manifestations of mitochondrial and other rare neurogenetic disorders and published her findings in a variety of peer-reviewed journals.

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She completed her general adult psychiatry residency at The Zucker Hillside Hospital, at the Northwell Health System in New York as a research track resident in 2017. As one of the 4 NIH research centers for schizophrenia, the program provided in depth training not only in general adult psychiatry but also in ECT, clozapine, perinatal psychiatry and other, more specialized areas of the field. During her residency she published in JAMA Psychiatry as well as the American Journal of Psychiatry. She also wrote segments for MSN.com, Psychology Today, Reader’s Digest, Talkspace.

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After graduating in 2017, besides working for Northwell as an attending psychiatrist, she was on faculty as a Visiting Scientist at the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research where she worked on creating evidence-based online psychotherapy programs.

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In 2018, she founded an innovative telepsychiatry group practice, Pearl Behavioral Health, providing accessible, quality mental health services to residents of New York City, directly to their homes, through insurance. By running this practice, Dr Farkas fine tuned her skills of employee management, client relations, billing/coding and contracting with managed care companies. Pearl earned the Women Owned Small Business accreditation and won the Innovations in Healthcare Award by Long Island Business News in 2018. In 2019, in collaboration with Castle Connolly Private Health Partners, a unique concierge model was rolled out to provide access to same day behavioral health services to the concierge clientele of CCPHP. Pearl Behavioral Health enrolled more than 2000 clients and got acquired by Lifestance Health in 2020.

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Upon the outset of the Covid-19 pandemic, where other practices were scrambling to convert their operations from brick and mortar to virtual, a management company, Pearl Health Solutions was born, with years of experience and collaboration between Dr Farkas and New York-based healthcare firm Grassi Healthcare Advisors, with the goal of helping other clinicians not only convert to the “tele” model but also to automate their practices and being able to focus on clinical work while Pearl took care of providing regulatory compliance and audit plan, billing and coding services, revenue cycle management, administrative assistance and marketing services.

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Dr Farkas is now on staff with LifeStance Health and works as a consultant for insurance and pharmaceutical companies. She continues to teach medical students and residents through internship programs.

She is a member of New York City Healthcare Business Leaders as well as the American Psychiatric Association.

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She is a proud half marathon runner, she loves the beach and spending time with her children.