SMH is owned and operated by the University of Rochester and serves as its primary teaching hospital.

It offers programs toward medical, dental, or graduate degrees through the School of Medicine and Dentistry.

The hospital anchors the University's health care delivery network in the Rochester area and serves as a primary community hospital and a regional trauma center for the Rochester area.

From 1945 to 1947, Strong was the site of non-consensual human experimentation programs under supervision of the Manhattan Project and its successor, the United States Atomic Energy Commission.

[3] Over a period of two years starting in 1945, a total of seventeen patients admitted to Strong for unrelated ailments were injected with a plutonium or uranium solution without their knowledge.