According to data, in February of this year, 1,565,255 people did not have a general and family medicine specialist assigned to them, while at the end of March, 1,593,802 people were in that situation, 28,547 more in the space of a month.

After the reduction observed between August and December 2024, the number of people without a family doctor increased by nearly 30,000 in the first three months of this year.

According to the same data, the number of people registered in primary health care (health centers) rose to 10,541,177 at the end of March, 12,326 more than in February.

At the end of last month, 8,933,346 people had a family doctor assigned, 17,878 fewer than the 8,951,224 the previous month.

Figures provided to Lusa at the end of March by the Ministry of Health indicate that from April 2024 to January this year, there were 160,042 new users registered in primary health care and that a family doctor was assigned to 161,121 more people.

The ministry also said that, in January of this year, 13 specialists in general and family medicine retired, which corresponded to at least 20,150 users who lost a family doctor.

One of the Government's measures to address the lack of family doctors, which is most evident in the Lisbon and Tagus Valley region, is the opening of new health centers that will be managed by the social and private sectors, the so-called Family Health Units model C. The health emergency and transformation plan, which has been in force since May, predicted that in July 2024 the first 20 USF-C would be put out to tender – 10 in Lisbon and Tagus Valley, five in Leiria and five in the Algarve – with the aim of “starting work before the end of the year”, which did not happen.

In January, the ACSS told Lusa that it had received 41 expressions of interest in applications for these health centers, which the government expects to cover a total of 180,000 users without a family doctor.

At the end of September, the Government approved a resolution that made it possible to provide family doctors to 75,000 people at the Cascais hospital, which operates under a Public-Private Partnership (PPP) regime, a measure that was also included in the executive's health plan.

Retired doctors

More than 700 retired doctors were working in the SUS at the end of 2024, more than half in health centers, a measure implemented in recent years and which the government will maintain in 2025. At issue is an exceptional regime that came into force in 2010 for a period of three years, which allowed the hiring of retirees by SUS services and establishments to address the shortage of doctors in Portugal, but which has been extended since then.

For 2024, the previous Government set the number of retired doctors to be hired for the SUS, under this exceptional regime, at 900, a contingent that is defined annually by means of an order.

For this year, the order from the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Health, recently published in the Official Gazette of the Union, increased the contingent, defining that up to 1,070 retired doctors can be hired.

The document also highlights that the characteristics of the current demographics of the medical class have led to a high number of retirements, a situation that will continue in the coming years, especially in the specialties of general and family medicine.