Medical Center to move partly upstate, report says

The Columbia University Medical Center—currently located at 168th Street in Manhattan—will move partly upstate by August 2010, according to NewsChannel 34, a local network based in Binghamton, New York.

Medical students would spend the first year and a half of their program at the Manhattan campus before switching to the new location in Cooperstown, New York.

The move—the result of a partnership between CUMC and Bassett Healthcare in Cooperstown—is supposedly intended to attract more physicians to rural areas, NewsChannel 34 reported, noting that 90 percent of physicians in New York work in urban areas.

Though the report from NewsChannel 34 contains quotes from Lee Goldman, Executive Vice President for Health and Biomedical Sciences and Dean of the Faculties of Health Sciences and of Medicine, officials could not be immediately reached to confirm the report or add more information.

Stay tuned for updates.