Weill Cornell Specialty Track

Cayuga Medical Center (CMC), located in Tompkins County, NY, is situated in the Finger Lakes Region, surrounded by several undergraduate institutions including Cornell University. Despite its robust academic, cultural, and outdoor offerings, Tompkins County is designated as a Health Professional Shortage Area (HPSA) for primary care by the Health Resources and Services Administration, highlighting the difficulty in attracting primary care providers to rural communities.  This is further complicated by the shifts within internal medicine, moving from generalist to more specialist models or from community based to hospital based physicians.  In 2011, the $2 billion total Medicare Graduate Medical Education (GME) payments to New York teaching hospitals were almost entirely allocated to urban-based programs. The funding for training is heavily misaligned with the geography of underserved areas. Creating programs to train physicians where they are most desperately needed requires innovative programs that partner experienced academic medical educators with motivated rural hospitals. To address the shortage of primary care physicians in its community, CMC has partnered with the New York Presbyterian (NYP) Internal Medicine Residency to deliver a unique training program with the goal of training highly motivated primary care leaders in rural New York.

In partnership with the New York Presbyterian Hospital/Weill-Cornell Internal Medicine Residency, Cayuga Medical Center will offer a unique training track where two selected residents will have the opportunity to spend their entire first year training in Manhattan alongside the Weill-Cornell Internal Medicine residents. These residents will complete their final two years of training in Ithaca at Cayuga Medical Center. We hope that this unique training experience will expose some of our residents to the differences in practice between large urban centers and smaller community hospitals and highlight many of the benefits medical practice in Ithaca brings.

Please note this track is listed under a separate NRMP match number. Residents accepted into the standard categorical program will NOT be allowed to switch into the Cornell Track after the match. See more details under “How to Apply.”