Special Programs: Columbia Bassett
The Columbia Bassett program at Cooperstown took its first students in 2010 and continues to take a small cohort of students annually. The program is a collaboration between Columbia Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and the Bassett Healthcare system in Cooperstown in upstate New York - best known for the baseball hall of fame. The Bassett Healthcare Network is a large, rural health system. That being said the Bassett program exposes students to rural health, primary care, health delivery systems, and trauma-informed care but it is not for students exclusively interested in those practice areas.
The program starts with an orientation at the Bassett campus and then the students join the other students at the Washington Heights campus for 18 months of preclinical studies at P&S. Integrated in those first 18 months are “Bassett sessions” on health care delivery or the relation of emotional trauma to disease. At the Bassett campus, the students spend 10 weeks in rapid inpatient blocks, a condensed version of the standard 4- to 8-week clinical rotations. They spend 1-2 weeks on the following inpatient services: Ob/Gyn, Psychiatry, Medicine, Pediatrics, Anesthesia, Neurology and Surgery. The goal is for students to start their longitudinal patient care curriculum sooner which is the core of the program.
For the next 40 weeks students have a series of scheduled primary care and specialty clinics on a daily basis alternating between different specialty clinics. At each clinic, they have the same preceptor week to week, allowing for long-term relationships with individual preceptors. The students then start building their own unique panel of patients. During the post-Major clinical year (4th year) the Columbia -Bassett students rejoin their classmates in New York City for two brief intersessions and for required rotations including a sub-internship, another clinical rotation, and a “Ready for Residency” block.
All Columbia Bassett students receive merit-based financial aid independent of a financial needs assessment, in the amount of $30,000/year.
To apply you apply to the Columbia-Bassett program you apply to the Columbia Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons on AMCAS and then select the Bassett program on your secondary application. If selected applicants interview at both the NYC and Cooperstown campuses. Applicants who are not selected for the Bassett program are still considered for the New York City campus.
The other unique part of the program is the SLIM (Systems, Leadership, Integration, and Management) curriculum. It is taught in collaboration with Columbia’s business and public health schools and is designed to prepare students to understand the U.S. health care system, the ways in which it is delivered, strategies for quality improvement, and overarching issues of cost and payment. The Scholarly project typically involves some element of the SLIM curriculum. There is also an emphasis on training in the core topic of emotional trauma across all four years of the curriculum.
