Bassett Healthcare has a long-standing tradition of educating third year allopathic medical students on individual rotations from Columbia University, Rochester University and Albany Medical College and at all times has about 18 third year medical students in the healthcare system. In 2007 Albany Medical College approached Bassett Healthcare as a site for all required third year clerkship rotations for 6 and then 12 students in the 2008/9 and 2009/10 academic years. A proposal was submitted to the Liaison Committee on Medical Education in December 2007 and by March 2008 Bassett received approval from the LCME as a clinical campus site. The following month Bassett was officially designated as a Regional Medical School Campus by the American Association of Medical Colleges.

A formal affiliation with the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University has existed since 1947. Students from Columbia have traditionally elected to spend one or more months at Bassett Hospital. These students are drawn to the practice of medicine in a rural multispecialty group setting with one hundred eighty six faculty members available for teaching on site daily. Columbia students consistently rate their electives as excellent to outstanding with the variety of pathology, strong teaching, and organization of the Hospital as main strengths.

One-third of Columbia's third-year students complete a required rotation in Primary Care Medicine on the Cooperstown campus and in our Regional Health Centers. Since 1999, Columbia third-year students have also completed a required Surgery rotation at Bassett.

Third-year students from Albany Medical College began required rotations to Bassett in the fall of 1988. Two Albany students per month visit Cooperstown in the Medicine III clerkship. This program has been enthusiastically received both at Bassett and in Albany.  The Albany PA Program and the Daemen PA Program send PA students for clerkships in Emergency Medicine and Surgery. 

The University of Rochester School of Medicine send students for their surgical clerkships to Bassett. In 2003, students also began coming for their Internal Medicine clerkship.  Four students in total come to Bassett for Surgery and Medicine from Rochester. 

During the early 1980s, an affiliation was developed with SUNY Health Sciences Center at Syracuse, for fourth-year student electives in the departments of medicine and pediatrics. Bassett electives are now classified as intramural and are listed in a separate section of the Syracuse elective catalog.

Students from all other LCME and AOA medical schools are encouraged to elect rotations at the Hospital. Contact Teri Plows, Medical Education Specialist, 1-888-547-6349.