Frank Fortunati, MD, vice chief and medical director of psychiatry and behavioral health at Yale New Haven (Conn.) Hospital since 2016, died March 5 at 58 after a battle with cancer.
Dr. Fortunati was a "transformative" leader for the Yale School of Medicine, the hospital and the psychiatry department, Yale said. He restructured the hospital's psychiatry and behavioral health department into five sections: inpatient psychiatry, ambulatory services, psychological medicine, interventional psychiatry and emergency services.
During the pandemic he led his team to transition ambulatory care to telemedicine, retool inpatient care to manage COVID-19 patients with urgent psychiatric conditions, and mobilize psychiatry and behavioral health in support of providers throughout the medical center, Yale said.
Dr. Fortunati earned his bachelor's in pharmacy and his law degree at New Brunswick, N.J.-based Rutgers University, and his medical degree from what is now Newark-based Rutgers New Jersey Medical School. He completed a psychiatry residency and fellowships in child and adolescent psychiatry and forensic psychiatry at Yale.
He won the Fleck Award, Yale psychiatry's highest honor, in 2020.
Dr. Fortunati mentored faculty who then became psychiatry chairs at the University of Rochester (N.Y.) and the University of Massachusetts in Amherst and one who was named CMO of a large health system. He recruited most of Yale New Haven's current psychiatry faculty and was involved in all of the health system's delivery networks, building cross-institution collaboration.
He is survived by his wife, Karen, and their children, Jenna and Frank.