More than 160 thousand users registered at health centres in Portugal did not have entitlement to a family doctor. This situation was identified within the scope of a process to review user records in the health system.
The affected users did not meet the necessary conditions to keep a family doctor. The main reason was that many of these users lived outside the country but had remained registered at Portuguese health centres.
Another determining factor was the absence of any record of use of the National Health Service in the last five years. This means that these users did not use the NHS during this period, which raised questions about the real need to maintain their registration.
This situation highlights the difficulties in managing user records and raises concerns about access to primary healthcare in Portugal, in a context where many users still do not have an assigned family doctor.
