In March 2025, the total number of users without a family doctor in Portugal rose to 1593,802 — 28,547 more than the 1565,255 registered in February — according to data released today by the Ministry of Health to Lusa
After a reduction between August and December 2024, the sector saw an increase of almost 30,000 users without a doctor in the first three months of the year. From April 2024 to January 2025, there were 160,042 new registrations in Primary Health Care and 161,121 family doctors were assigned. However, in January of this year, 13 specialists retired, causing at least 20,150 users to lose their reference professional.
The Portuguese Association of General and Family Medicine (APMGF) warns that, to date, no effective measures have been implemented to retain family doctors in the National Health Service, and that without concrete incentives or programs to retain professionals, it will be difficult to meet the goal of assigning a family doctor to each user by the end of 2025.
Do not use these numbers for any non-emergency matters.