Today is day 8 in Buenos Aires! Today we visited Austral University. Austral University is a private university in a little outside of the city of Buenos Aires. We toured the Austral University Hospital and met some Austral students.

While visiting the hospital we learned about how it functions. We learned that it is similar to the Swiss Medical hospital, Santos de los Arcos, we visited last week. They are both private hospitals that provide their own insurance options, insurance through obras sociale, and contracts with insurance companies. They have some differences when it comes to delivery of care. They both want quality patient care, but due to Austral University Hospital being located in a growing area they face an abundance of patients, where as Swiss Medical has more locations available in Buenos Aires. Austral University Hospital wants to resolve this issue by increasing the price to have coverage so people choose to leave and go somewhere else. This is an interesting resolution to the overflow of patients. Another differences is at Swiss Medical there is not a long wait time and patients can get an appointment quickly. At the Austral University Hospital there are long wait times and appointments can only be made for months in advance. Along with differing overflow problems, they also differ on who is the biggest provider of their coverage. For Swiss Medical they are the biggest provider, meaning they have people buy coverage directly through them. The coverage from obras sociale and pure insurance companies follows. This is the opposite for Austral University Hospital. Their insurance coverage bought directly through them is the lowest source. Whereas the pure insurance companies and obras sociale are the biggest source.

During lunch we got to chat with a few students from Austral University. It was so great to get to talk about cultural differences and how their education system is set up. We all worked together to come up with a solution for a case we were given. this also brought out some differences in our country of what is available to people and other things. The girls I talked to were super sweet and even gave some great recommendation of places to visit and some places to shop.

Well that was day 8. It was a pretty short day, but excited to get back to the hotel early and have some more free time to do some shopping. Tomorrow we have a busy schedule, so I’ll check back in and let you know how it goes!