Data from February of this year indicate that 1,565,255 individuals did not have a designated general and family medicine specialist, with this number rising to 1,593,802 by the end of March, an increase of 28,547 over one month.
Following a decrease observed between August and December 2024, the number of patients without a family doctor rose by nearly 30,000 in the first three months of this year.
Furthermore, the number of individuals registered in primary healthcare facilities (health centers) reached 10,541,177 at the end of March, marking an increase of 12,326 compared to February.
By the close of the previous month, 8,933,346 people had been allocated a family doctor, which was 17,878 fewer than the 8,951,224 recorded the month before.
Additionally, data provided by the Ministry of Health at the end of March revealed that from April 2024 to January of this year, 160,042 new patients registered at primary healthcare centers, and 161,121 people were assigned a family doctor.
The ministry also noted that in January of this year, 13 specialists in general and family medicine retired, leaving a minimum of 20,150 patients without a family doctor.
In response to the shortage of family doctors, which is especially pronounced in the Lisbon and Tagus Valley region, the government’s strategy includes opening new health centers managed by the social and private sectors, known as Family Health Units model C (USF-C).
The emergency and transformation plan for health, effective since May, anticipated that the first 20 USF-C would be open for competition by July 2024—10 in Lisbon and the Tagus Valley, five in Leiria, and five in the Algarve—with the aim of starting operations before the year’s end, a goal that has yet to be met.
In January, the ACSS reported receiving 41 expressions of interest for these health centers, which the government predicts will serve a total of 180,000 patients without a family doctor.
At the end of September, the government approved a resolution enabling 75,000 people to have access to a family doctor at the Cascais hospital, which operates under a Public-Private Partnership (PPP), a measure also included in the executive’s health plan.
Over 700 retired doctors were working within the SNS by the end of 2024, with more than half in health centers, a measure implemented in recent years and planned to continue into 2025.
This situation relates to an exceptional regime introduced in 2010 for a three-year period, allowing the employment of retirees by SNS services and establishments to address the doctor shortage in Portugal. This regime has since been extended repeatedly.
For 2024, the previous government set a cap of 900 retired doctors to be hired under this exceptional regime, a contingent annually defined by decree.
For this year, a recent order by the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Health, published in the Government Gazette, increased this contingent, allowing up to 1,070 retired doctors to be hired.
The document highlights that the current demographic characteristics of the medical profession have led to a high number of retirements, a trend expected to continue in the coming years, particularly in the field of general and family medicine.
