And just like that, we’re starting our second week in Buenos Aires. I can’t believe this is our ninth day here the trip has flown by so fast. Today we got back into the groove of our healthcare management. We visited Astrol, where there is a private university and private hospital within the same area. The hospital is called Hospital Universitario Austral and the university is called Universidad Astrol. This was another great opportunity to learn about the healthcare system in Argentina. The Hospital Universitario Austral is a private hospital that resembles the hospital we visited on the first day, Santario Arcos which is a hospital of Swiss Medical Group. These are both very nice private hospitals within the Argentine healthcare system, however, there are a couple of ways they differ. One of them is the ability to get coverage in a short period of time. For Swiss Medical it seemed to be much easier to schedule an appointment at their hospital, compared to Austral. We talked to one of the physicians of the Austral hospital and he told us it will take upwards of a month after you schedule your appointment until you actually meet with them. As we toured Swiss Medical and talked to one of their board members, Gabriel Novak, I got the understanding that receiving the coverage you need can be done in a much shorter period of time. So to some things up, Swiss Medical’s hospital has the ability to provide coverage to its patients at a much faster and more efficient rate than that of Austral’s hospital. After we toured the hospital we toured the University of Austral. We had some delicious empanadas for lunch, and during lunch, we met with several of the students from the University of Austral. Together we split into groups where we were given a case in which to resolve. Our case talked about the severe amount of depression and illness among elderly people in the United States. One thing that Argentina does that I feel the United States doesn’t do as well is focus on your quality of life. At Austral they want you to enjoy your life as much as possible while you’re still alive, while in the United States, they tend to focus more on extending the course of your life whether you enjoy that life or not. This is something that the United States needs to change, they need to focus on the quality of life of their patients and less on the length of life itself.