Coverage of users with a family doctor in Portugal will remain stagnant until 2028, with around 15% of users of the National Health Service continuing to lack access to a family doctor, according to the SNS Global Reference Framework for the three-year period 2026-2028. The coverage percentage will be fixed at 85.37%, the same value recorded in 2024, despite the Government's initial objective having been to assign a family doctor to 98% of users by 2026.
The document was published nine months late, and both the Minister of Health and the executive director of the SNS had already warned that it would not be possible to guarantee a family doctor for all users by 2027, due to the growing number of new enrollees in the system.
Despite ongoing initiatives with the private sector, including family health units model C and conventions, and the revision of the number of registered users at health centres — which reduced to 1.37 million the number of users without a doctor — the rate of uncovered population remains unchanged. The Order of Doctors criticised the situation, referring to it as the "continuity of minimum services in the SNS".
