Hospitals Magazine had the opportunity to speak with Matthias Hirsch, Vice President of Statista Healthcare, about the official launch of ‘Statista Healthcare’, a new business unit dedicated to advancing quality assessment, benchmarking, and data-driven insights in the healthcare sector. Building on Statista’s global reputation for reliable data and analytics, Statista Healthcare aims to empower hospitals, health systems, and policymakers with tools to measure, compare, and improve performance. In this exclusive interview, Mr. Hirsch shares the vision behind this initiative, its potential to shape global healthcare standards, and the specific opportunities it presents for emerging markets, including the Middle East.
What motivated the launch of the new business unit Statista Healthcare, and how does it fit into Statista’s overarching mission?
Statista draws on many years of expertise in evaluating healthcare providers. Renowned worldwide for our data analysis and communication capabilities, we have become a trusted authority in the field, exemplified by our collaboration with Newsweek on the prestigious “World’s Best Hospitals” ranking.
Building on this strong foundation, felt that now is the right time to take the next step: creating a dedicated division ‘Statista Healthcare’. This new business unit empowers providers and institutions to measure, benchmark and sustainably improve their quality through targeted strategies. With unmatched analytical precision and deep sector knowledge, this division strengthens Statista’s overarching mission – to empower with sound and actionable data.
You’re combining health-specific quality assessment with Statista’s data and analytics expertise. What kind of impact do you envision this synergy will have on the global healthcare sector?
Statista Healthcare unlocks entirely new possibilities: For the first time, quality information from one of the world’s most complex and important industries becomes truly comparable on an international scale.
By fostering global transparency and exchange among stakeholders, this initiative has the potential to reshape healthcare, creating an environment that continuously drives quality improvements and, ultimately, delivers better care for patients worldwide.
What makes your approach to quality development and benchmarking stand out from other existing initiatives in the healthcare industry?
Statista Healthcare builds on a unique expertise derived from its established Global Hospital Rating and rankings of healthcare providers worldwide. This foundation enables us to deliver highly specialized, in-depth insights for hospitals, clinics and medical facilities.
Beyond data, we offer tailored services that directly address the core priorities of healthcare institutions. Through our ‘Custom Quality Development Program’, we support providers in advancing their performance in line with their specific strategic and clinical objectives. This includes comprehensive benchmarking projects, the development of relevant quality indicators and targeted analyses – all designed to drive sustainable quality improvements. Our approach is grounded in global standards and continuously aligned with the latest advancements in the healthcare sector.
In your view, what are some of the biggest blind spots healthcare providers face when trying to assess their own performance and how can Statista Healthcare close those gaps?
One common challenge is ensuring that the chosen KPIs truly capture all strategically relevant aspects of quality in a balanced way – from clinical outcomes and patient experience to operational efficiency and innovation. Equally important is structuring these indicators so that they provide actionable insights for leadership, enabling genuinely data-driven decision-making. In many cases, data processes themselves present a barrier: KPIs may not be consistently validated, complete, up-to-date, or defined in a way that allows meaningful comparison. Finally, external reference points are often missing, making it difficult to put performance into context. Statista Healthcare supports providers and decision-makers across all these points – from designing an optimal KPI set that is relevant to management and establishing robust data processes, to integrating relevant external benchmarks that create transparency and drive targeted improvement.
One concrete example is your collaboration with the ANHP in Mexico. Can you walk us through the project and its key objectives?
Our collaboration with the ANHP (Asociación Nacional de Hospitales Privados) in Mexico exemplifies Statista Healthcare’s mission: Enabling providers through transparency, benchmarking and data-driven quality development. The goal was to create a comprehensive, objective, and comparative assessment of hospital quality across ANHP’s diverse member hospitals, purely for internal transparency and improvement.
Together with ANHP’s leadership and a multidisciplinary expert circle, we co-developed a customized benchmarking framework with over 100 medical quality indicators across five strategic dimensions, ranging from patient safety and clinical outcomes to digital health, infrastructure, patient experience and staff qualifications. Indicator weighting followed a hybrid approach, combining expert input and data analytics to ensure relevance, fairness, and alignment with ANHP’s strategic priorities.
The result: Tailored, actionable insights for each hospital and the association overall, highlighting both performance and peer comparison, including international benchmarks. All data remained anonymized, and results were communicated with a focus on constructive feedback to support continuous improvement. The initiative represents a key milestone for evidence-based, transparent healthcare management in the region.
What were the measurable outcomes or initial results of this collaboration?
The outcomes of the ANHP collaboration were both tangible and strategic. Each participating hospital received a tailored results package, including a management summary and full dataset with detailed scores across all dimensions, indicators and peer groups. This transparency enabled hospitals to identify strengths and pinpoint areas for improvement, and many used the findings directly to guide internal strategy.
More broadly, the benchmarking brought a new level of quality awareness and alignment across the ANHP network. It highlighted where Mexican private hospitals already outperform international benchmarks, such as low mortality and infection rates, while also revealing improvement potential in digitalization or PROMs.
Beyond the data, the project fostered a strong collaborative culture. Hospitals, experts, and ANHP leadership co-shaped the methodology, laying the foundation not for a one-time audit, but for an ongoing quality improvement process expected to grow in reach and depth.
What types of healthcare partners or regions are you particularly looking to collaborate with in the near future?
We are especially interested in partnering with healthcare providers and organizations that are committed to measurable, transparent quality improvement. This includes leading hospitals, forward-looking health ministries, and national associations. We also work closely with specialized data partners whose contributions help us refine and enrich our analyses. These collaborations strengthen the foundation for our international rankings and benchmarking projects, ensuring they remain robust, credible, and ever more insightful. As part of this, we continuously expand the underlying data basis to increase the accuracy and relevance of our results. Regions undergoing rapid transformation, such as the Middle East and parts of Asia, present exciting opportunities – their strong investments in infrastructure, digital health, and patient care align perfectly with our expertise in ranking, benchmarking, KPI development, and best-practice integration.
How relevant is the mission of Statista Healthcare for healthcare providers in the Middle East specifically? What opportunities do you see in countries with rapidly evolving healthcare systems?
The Middle East is one of the most ambitious healthcare regions in the world right now, combining significant capital investment with a strong vision for quality, innovation, and patient experience. Our mission – to make quality measurable, transparent, and internationally comparable – is directly aligned with these goals. By providing robust, standardized benchmarks and actionable insights, we can help providers in the region accelerate their transformation, attract top medical talent, and position themselves as global leaders in advanced, patient-centered care.
How do you ensure that your benchmarking projects are adaptable to different healthcare contexts, including those in the Arab world?
Adaptability starts with recognizing that every healthcare system operates within a unique framework of regulations, structures, and resource realities. Our approach begins with a detailed scoping phase, during which we work closely with local stakeholders to understand strategic priorities, data environments, and existing quality frameworks. This ensures that our benchmarking is not a one-size-fits-all import, but rather a tailored methodology, grounded in globally recognized standards while calibrated to local definitions and practices.
We employ a modular design: core indicators that enable international comparability are complemented by context-specific metrics relevant to the region or institution. Data collection processes are adjusted to reflect the available infrastructure, and our validation methods are sensitive to local reporting norms. Just as importantly, we integrate peer comparisons at both global and regional levels, enabling institutions to see themselves in multiple contexts. This flexibility, combined with a rigorous methodological backbone, allows our benchmarking projects to deliver credible, actionable insights in any healthcare setting – from established centers of excellence to rapidly developing systems.
As healthcare becomes more globalized, how can institutions in the Arab region benefit from being part of an international quality benchmarking network?
Through Statista Healthcare’s global rankings, Global Hospital Rating, tailored benchmarking projects and custom quality development programs, institutions gain a clear, data-driven view of their performance in an international context. These services not only identify strengths and areas for improvement but can also provide access to best practices from high-performing hospitals worldwide. By integrating these insights into their own strategies, providers can accelerate quality development, strengthen patient outcomes, and align with global standards, while contributing their own innovations to the international exchange of expertise.
