It’s absolutely crazy to think we have less than three days left in Argentina. It feels like just yesterday we had our first visit to the public hospital of Santorio de los Arcos. The country and city of Buenos Aires have begun to grow on me, but I’ll have to admit… I miss home. Nonetheless, back to business. We began the day with hotel breakfast then returned back to Santorio to receive a lecture from the health manager of Sancor Mutual Association- Dra. Marcela Travaglini.

Sancor Mutual is best described as a membership for folks who believe in the philanthropist philosophy of “love your neighbor”. Members pay a voluntary monthly fee which allows them to receive healthcare/ aid paid for by the association. This is very different than insurance. Insurances such as Obras, require a percentage of your salary to be covered by them. For Sancor, those who want to be members have no salary requirement, rather they choose to make an out-of-pocket contribution. People of this mutuality believe in friends helping friends and almost view big insurance as a money-grabbing, soulless entity. A big benefit that differentiates Sancor is that in times of crisis, where you have starving children, for example, they will step in a provide aid from the fund to give that support. Another big component is the closeness members have to their admin of the association. Just like an election, members from different areas of the country get to nominate and vote for who they want on the executive board every year. If I were a citizen of Argentina, I’d absolutely join a mutual association such as Sancor. Once we learned about this outside entity to healthcare, we then traveled to a private hospital devoted to the heart- Instituto Cardiovascular.

This facility delivered wide eyes and dropped jaws. We were greeted with a morning snack, alfajores, and goodie tote bags. The lecture provided by multiple of their doctors opened up with live footage of heart surgery! For myself, as a business major, a warning would have been sufficient but the nursing students loved it! The representatives explained the institute’s mission and vision statements, their divisions of healthcare management, and what their next steps were regarding innovation, efficiency, tech, and more. We then toured a couple of the floors and wow. The waiting room for patients was to “resemble the comfort of an airport” and I questioned what airport was to reference! This was the most amazing waiting room I’ve ever seen. We even saw the operating room and their goal is to have the sedated patient to be as comfortable as possible. Thus, they fill the area with LED color-changing lights with music filling the room. So cozy.

For the evening, we toured Museo de los Inmigrantes- a museum dedicated to the early years of Argentina’s mass immigration. I love being able to walk through history and this place provided much of it. We got to see original passports from immigrants and replicas of both their travel trunks and the beds they slept in. A nice surprise was the dedication to modern art at the end of the tour which I highly appreciate as an art museum geek. Very innovative and imaginative.

To end my day, some of the girls and I went for a little shopping spree around the hotel. We found this adorable jewelry store that I couldn’t resist buying five pieces at. You will see me with new earrings here soon! As a mentioned a couple nights ago, I wanted to return to Saigon for some more Vietnamese food. Today was the day I try Pho! Pho (“fa”, see now you understand the title) is an authentic Viet soup-like dish that includes beef, beef broth, rice noodles, and various veggies and sauces as customary. Oh my, was this a great idea! If no one would’ve stopped me, I might’ve eaten the chopsticks!