MAC Hospitals: Delivering A New Model of Healthcare in Mexico

Insights

August 13, 2025

Luis Cervantes, the head of General Atlantic’s Mexico City office, recently sat down with Miguel Khoury Siman, founder and CEO of General Atlantic portfolio company MAC Hospitals, to discuss the changing healthcare landscape in Mexico.

Cervantes: Let’s start with some background. What inspired you to create MAC?

Khoury Siman: After high school, I went to the United States for six months. I came back and told my father I wanted to be a cardiologist. He said, “What are you talking about? I’ve been building a sweater factory for the last 40 years, and you have to help me.”

“I ran the family business for almost 15 years. Eventually, I started building properties and applied for a loan to build corporate offices in my city, Celaya. The bank asked me to do a feasibility study. I learned that Celaya needed doctors’ offices, not commercial offices.

Then my mother got sick. I took her to the best hospital in town, and the experience was terrible. The machines broke down, the nurses were not well-trained, and the prices were obscene. I made the decision to build a hospital in Celaya with the best equipment, the best talent, and affordable prices. I didn’t know at the time, but I was building a healthcare model that Mexico was missing. Eighteen years later, MAC has 24 hospitals in 19 cities, making us the hospital operator with the largest geographic presence in Mexico.¹

Cervantes: What were the biggest challenges during this growth phase?

Khoury Siman: One of the biggest challenges in this industry is capital. You need a lot of capital to build a hospital, and then you are going to lose money for 24 to 36 months while you start running it. But it’s a unique industry because you are working with lives. It’s not only a matter of capital: you need service, quality, and safety.

Cervantes: What are the biggest challenges that healthcare in Mexico is facing structurally, and what does that mean for MAC?

Khoury Siman: The population is aging. When that happens, chronic illness arrives: diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease. There is not sufficient capacity in Mexico’s public or in private hospitals to serve our population. This creates a big opportunity for MAC. The demographic trend will continue to put pressure on an already stressed public sector. The federal budget for healthcare was cut 12% relative to 2024 and now represents only 2.5% of GDP, compared with a 6% recommendation by the World Health Organization.²

Cervantes: Let’s talk about nearshoring. Mexico is benefiting from the decoupling of China and the US, and a lot of new investment is coming into Mexico. What does that mean for your business?

Khoury Siman: We expect to see more jobs coming into the northern part of the country because of nearshoring, and we want to be able to attend to those workers. We are currently building hospitals in Saltillo and Ciudad Juarez that will serve that population.

Cervantes: How does technology play into your company’s future?

Khoury Siman: We are investing approximately $10 million in a project called Transforma³, which is going to revolutionize the administration of the company and help us build the first private health system in Mexico. With Transforma, patients’ information is in our cloud, and our hospitals and central operation will be completely in sync. If you are in Los Cabos on vacation and you go to a hospital, we’ll have your information. It will also make us smarter and more efficient, transforming the cost structure to allow us to become more affordable.

¹Based on EY report of main competitors’ footprint compared to MAC (2023)
²Based on Federal Budget for 2025. Article published by the Centro de Investigación Económica Presupuestaria: https://ciep.mx/R05Z
³Internal Company data based on 2025 Budget