Published May 19th, 2022

The United States magazine Newsweek has rated a private hospital in a southern borough of Mexico City as Mexico’s best hospital for a second consecutive year.

In alliance with the German market and consumer data company Statista, the magazine ranked hospitals in 27 countries for its World’s Best Hospitals 2022 index.

Médica Sur, located in the borough of Tlalpan, ranked No. 1 in Mexico with a score of 94.37. Seven of the other nine hospitals in Mexico’s top 10 are also located in the Mexico City metropolitan area.

The scores are based on three data sources: online surveys completed by medical professionals, patient experience surveys, and key performance indicators for hospitals.

Behind Médica Sur in second place was the ABC Medical Center in Santa Fe, a business district in the capital’s southwest. The private hospital achieved a score of 93.36 and was the only other Mexican hospital with a score above 90.

In third place and ranking first among Mexico’s public hospitals was the Siglo XXI National Medical Center in the central borough of Cuauhtémoc. The hospital complex, which includes several specialist hospitals, is operated by the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS), a large public health care provider. It achieved a score of 82.45.

Rounding out the top 10 were the Observatorio ABC Medical Center in the Álvaro Obregón borough of Mexico City; the IMSS La Raza National Medical Center in the Azcapotzalco borough; the Ángeles Hospital in Lomas, México state; the Guadalajara Civil Hospital; the Christus Muguerza High Specialty Hospital in Monterrey; the Dr. Manuel Gea González General Hospital in Tlalpan; and the Español Hospital in the Mexico City borough of Miguel Hidalgo.

Those hospitals were allocated scores between 76.99 and 81.54.

Newsweek compiled a list of Mexico’s 54 best hospitals, 16 of which are in Mexico City. Other cities with hospitals on the list include Guadalajara, Monterrey, Ciudad Juárez, Puebla, Mérida, Hermosillo, Cancún, Aguascalientes, Tijuana and Querétaro.

The Hospitales Ángeles network, which has 25 hospitals in Mexico, has seven hospitals among the best 54, while IMSS has 12.

Médica Sur and the ABC Medical Center in Santa Fe were the only two Mexican hospitals rated among the 250 best in the world by Newsweek. They were among 100 hospitals in the unordered 151-250 cohort.

A group of medical experts who collaborated with Newsweek and Statista on the index said that hospitals around the world had to adapt quickly to new and existing challenges amid the coronavirus pandemic.

David Bates, chief of general internal medicine and primary care at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital, said the world’s leading hospitals were able to remain strong amid the pandemic “largely by attracting the best people, those who are focused on developing new approaches to care and making care better.”

Mexican authorities reconfigured many hospitals to better handle the influx of COVID-19 patients, but the public health system nevertheless struggled to cope at times, such as amid the second wave of infections in late 2020 and early 2021.

Some critics, such as the bureau chief of Bloomberg News in Mexico, claimed that the public health system was woefully unprepared to deal with the pandemic, which has claimed over 324,000 lives in Mexico, according to official data.