Day 9 in Argentina! Today we met at a very early 8am for the bus to go to University! It was around an hour drive to Univeridad Austral, one of the most popular private universities outside of Buenos Aires. First we talked to Dr. Marcelo Pellizzari, the Chairman for the Health & Safety Board at Hospital Universitario Austral. He did a Q&A about Hospital Universitario Austral, a well known private hospital associated with the university. We talked about the type of care the hospital provides, their response to COVID, and their issues with overcrowding and understaff. After this talk we hiked across campus to visit the palliative care center. This is sort of like a hospice center and Dr. Eduardo told us all about what they do. It was very sweet and moving to hear how much of an impact they make on patients but at the same time it is extremely sad. We walked in and out of the facility pretty quickly just to get the layout and a general idea of the building. Next was lunch and a mixer with the students at the university. We had empanadas that were really good and got put into groups with 2 Pitt students and 2 Austral students each. Makayla and I talked with Carlos and Aistlin, I definitely spelled that wrong. They were both so so nice and loved hearing about university in the US. I showed Aistlin pictures of our campus, football games, and my dorm room and she kept saying it looked exactly like the movies. They were both really good at speaking English and had so many questions for us. It was very interesting to hear about their university experience and I am so glad we got to meet some university students our age. After this activity we bused back to the hotel and called it a day.

Today’s blog prompt is to compare and contrast Austral and Swiss Medical Group in terms of their unique delivery models. For comparison, Austral and Swiss both have their own insurance companies that they use at their facilites in order to create more of a monopoly on their healthcare industry users. Also, they are both Obras Sociales that determine what hospitals a worker can go to for free. Additionally, they are both private companies. To contrast the two, Austral seems to be struggling more in terms of overcrowding and they seemed a little less customer forward in their methods to improve this. Dr. Marcelo said that there are very long wait times of around a month in advanced booked out. In order to combat this he said that they will increase the price of the insurance so that the lower paying people leave Austral to go somewhere else. He assumes that in the long term this will increase the quantity of care Austral provides, but it just seemed kind of harsh to me. He called this economic differentiation. Overall, Austral seemed to be struggling more than Swiss Medical Group.