Today we visited multiple different clinics with a variety of structures. First, we visited a small, local community clinic named Tomas Reggio Primary Health. After this visit and a short bus ride, we visited Austral University and their massive private hospital. 

When visiting the Tomas Reggio Primary Health clinic, we learned that all but 3 employees are volunteer workers supporting an impoverished community. The small clinic is mostly ran by volunteer doctors that pick up extra work for the spiritual benefit. However, doctors already have large workloads and cannot afford to spend time helping, restricting access to certain specialty care. Additionally, the lack of doctors makes care extremely crowded for the community. Doctors have to treat 70 patients each and the clinic has over 1500 visits per month. With such a small space, overcrowding and struggle to accommodate is inevitable.

While the community supported by Tomas Reggio Primary Health is not adequately supported, Austral’s hospital exceeds expectations when providing care. Austral’s system allows priority access to beds in their network even when hospitals may be overcrowded. By paying into their private insurance, Austral ensures that patients have access to timely high quality care. Austral’s system allows care to be cohesive and keep customers coming back to their network. 

Finally, we also met a few students from Austral University that were with us on our visits today. Shoutout Fran and Mateo!