The health sector regulator has reported that the most mentioned issues in complaints were healthcare and patient safety (19.9%), administrative procedures (18.3%), and access to healthcare (18.1%).
Complaints regarding “healthcare and patient safety” stand out among public sector providers with inpatient services, including public-private partnerships, while “access to healthcare” is most frequent in public sector providers without inpatient services.
In the private sector, both with and without inpatient services, “financial issues” are the most common complaints, whereas in the social or cooperative sector, “healthcare and patient safety” remains the most mentioned theme regardless of care type.
During this period, the ERS made decisions on 47,275 complaints, with 29,196 relating to incidents in 2025.
The report highlights that the Local Health Unit São José in Lisbon received the highest number of complaints (2,574), followed by ULS Amadora-Sintra (1,667), Hospital Lusíadas in Lisbon (1,536), and ULS Algarve (1,429).
Of the 18,926 complaints about incidents during this period and decided by ERS, 57.5% were resolved without further regulatory intervention, and 30.1% were resolved with corrective measures by providers or with internal signaling for appropriate and aggregate sector intervention.
“In 10.3% of cases (2,007 processes), there was a need to open new administrative or sanctioning processes or to attach them to ongoing processes of this nature in the ERS, along with a proposal for conflict mediation,” while 2.1% of cases (409 processes) were referred to other entities with specific competencies to analyze the claimed facts.
The ERS identified procedural non-compliance in 2,108 complaint processes, mainly concerning public sector healthcare providers.
“Without any adjustment or ratio regarding establishment size, production, or target population, it was found that healthcare providers responsible for 75.1% of complaints during the period matched a total of 1,158 establishments, belonging to 33 entities,” the report emphasizes.
Regarding processes classified exclusively as praises or suggestions, the ERS reviewed 12,095 processes, with 10,270 occurring in the year.
Praises, which increased by 8.2% compared to the same period in 2024, were mostly directed at clinical staff (32.4%), followed by reasons related to the functioning of support services (25.2%) and non-clinical staff (20.3%).
Compared to the private (35.2%) and social (1.3%) sectors, public sector providers (63.6%) reported a higher number of praises, irrespective of care type, notes the report.
According to the ERS, 75.5% of praises and suggestions concerned 683 establishments, belonging to 31 entities.
Overall, ERS received 53,713 complaints, praises, and suggestions (REC processes) in the first half of the year, with 18.7% (10,049) pertaining exclusively to praises.
