Today was a packed schedule! We started the day by heading to Austral University for a lecture by Dr. Josefina Medrano. She was the past minister of Salta during the Covid pandemic. This was extremely interesting, as Salta is a poor province in comparison to Buenos Aires and they tend to handle things differently. We got to learn a little bit about her, her experience, and how important it is to provide proper care and support to Argentines. Buenos Aires has top medical professionals, doctors, surgeons, and hospitals that can do practically anything healthcare related. Meanwhile in Salta, patients are flown over to Buenos Aires to receive the top care if it is life-saving or necessary. This is because Salta doesn’t have nearly enough resources or people to provide the help and care they need. This specific comparison made me think of how this may be similar to the United States. If someone needs life saving surgery and they are in a rural community, they are definitely going to be transported to a nearby city to get top tier care.
After finishing up Dr. Medrano’s lecture, we headed over to Fernandez Public Hospital. Here, we were given a lecture by a medical director of the hospital regarding history and general information. It was reformed in 1977 and previously had 850 beds, now they have a little under 400 in the hospital. It is the most well known hospital for the people, as public hospitals do not charge their patients. Healthcare is a right. If anyone needs healthcare, they have access to it via the public hospitals like Fernandez. It has improved by 11% from 2019 to 2023 and has a total of 229 people, 278 of those being nurses and 128 being nurse’s assistants. They cannot control their budget as they get the same, fixed amount from the government because it is public. The majority of the budget goes to human resources to provide the best and most accurate care specific to the needs of Argentines in Buenos Aires. Taking a look around the hospital, it was very crowded, full of patients and staff.
Unfortunately, I had to leave the day early due to mild travel stomach bug symptoms and did not tour the public or private hospitals. The group went on to lunch and toured Los Arcos Private Hospital. From my knowledge, the private hospitals are much more well kept and run due to the large amount of money they have available to spend on resources for patients. The hospitals have many amenities and nice rooms for patients and family. Care is much more highly rated at private hospitals than public. Private hospitals often focus around quality of care while being financially responsible because the government does not play a role in handling their budget.
I’m looking forward to definitely learning more about the private sector because I missed a good section of it today. Tomorrow, the unions in Argentina are holding a general strike and I am curious to see how it will all play out. I’ll see you tomorrow!
