Columbia-Presbyterian And Stamford Formalize Affiliation
Stamford joins The New York and Presbyterian Hospital Network
Columbia-Presbyterian and Stamford Health System have finalized a formal agreement to provide improved access to patients, medical education, and residency programs for Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons medical students and residency training at Stamford's acute care facilities in Connecticut. The formal agreement includes medical education. Second-and-third-year medical students from Columbia and residents from Columbia-Presbyterian will begin clinical rotations at one of the acute care facilities of Stamford Health System beginning July 1998. Columbia students will rotate at Stamford in the internal medicine, surgery, psychiatry, obstetrics/ gynecology specialties and for primary care experience. Columbia-Presbyterian offers additional avenues for Stamford Health System, including possible relationships around managed care contracting and other regional business opportunities. "The affiliation will allow Stamford to become a major teaching site for Columbia- Presbyterian students," says Gerald Thomson, M.D., the Lambert and Sonneborn Professor of Medicine and Senior Associate Dean. "Columbia will also expand its clinical research efforts while adding many distinguished Stamford clinicians to the faculty." Stamford has been a teaching institution for more than 25 years. Forming an academic affiliation with Columbia-Presbyterian "is very exciting," says Philip D. Cusano, Stamford Health System President/CEO. "Columbia-Presbyterian is a world class institution and this affiliation offers important opportunities for our patients and community." Columbia's College of Physicians & Surgeons was the first U.S. medical school to grant the M.D. degree, in 1770. In 1922, the medical school became part of the world's first academic medical center when it formed an alliance with Presbyterian Hospital to create Columbia- Presbyterian Medical Center (CPMC). The CPMC campus is also home to Columbia University's Schools of Dental and Oral Surgery, Public Health, and Nursing. The four schools at the medical center comprise the University's Health Sciences Division, which has the largest medical faculty of any institution in New York state and one of the largest in the United States. All members of the CPMC medical staff have academic appointments in the College of Physicians & Surgeons. With one of the largest, not-for-profit hospitals in the nation, housing such specialties as the country's largest heart transplant program, the Neurological Institute, Babies & Children's Hospital, and Sloane Hospital for Women, Columbia-Presbyterian offers 58 accredited residency programs, with a total of 810 residents and fellows. The Columbia-Presbyterian and Stamford affiliation is the latest partnership of a rapidly growing regional health network, The New York and Presbyterian Hospital Care Network, which includes 29 hospitals in the New York metropolitan area as well as 73 ambulatory care facilities and a number of specialty institutes, long-term care facilities, physician groups, and managed care entities. Stamford Health System is an integrated health system offering a full continuum of health care services to the residents of lower Fairfield County. The system consists of two acute care facilities--The Stamford Hospital and St. Joseph Medical Center--as well as the William and Sally Tandet Center for Continuing Care, a 130-bed long-term care facility, and VNA Care, a home health agency. Other system entities include the Diagnostic Imaging Center, Stamford Surgical Center, Hospice Care, and the Rehab Center, an outpatient rehabilitation facility.