CHRISTUS Health of Irving, Texas, affiliated with the Muguerza family in 2000 to create Grupo CHRISTUS Muguerza in order to provide health care services in Mexico. At the time of the affiliation, the family owned two hospitals. The CHRISTUS Muguerza group is one of Mexico's largest private health care systems, operating six hospitals and managing a seventh. It also runs outpatient clinics, an ambulance service and clinics for impoverished people in three states. Plans call for another hospital in Tuxtla, Mexico.

Dr. Thomas Royer, president and chief executive of CHRISTUS Health said that to his knowledge, CHRISUS is the only U.S. Catholic health system partnering with a Mexican affiliate in this way.

As dictated by the tax laws in Mexico, CHRISTUS Muguerza facilities must operate as for-profit entities, paying taxes on any profit they make. However, CHRISTUS Muguerza simultaneously operates as a "nonprofit" hospital system, in that none of the profits are shared with the owners, but are rather reinvested in new facilities, current technologies and in paying appropriate salaries and benefits to the CHRISTUS associates there. In addition, because government-owned hospitals are designated as the providers of charity care, the other hospitals in Mexico primarily serve insured and self-pay patients.

"Because those who can't afford to pay for their care don't generally bring themselves to our hospitals, we were forced to find other ways for Grupo CHRISTUS Muguerza to care for the poor in response to our Catholic, faith-based history and our mission to extend the healing ministry of Jesus Christ," said Royer.

In each of the areas where CHRISTUS Muguerza runs a hospital, it partners with the government and other organizations to construct clinics for the poor. Five of these hospitals and clinics are presently operating and three more are scheduled to open this year. CHRISTUS Muguerza is raising funds to build one of these clinics in Reynosa.