According to data consulted by Lusa, 2024 ended with 1,522,545 people without a general and family medicine specialist assigned, but that number has now risen to 1,564,203, an increase of 41,658 users in the space of a month.

According to the transparency portal, since April 2024, when the current Government took office, the number of people without a family doctor rose to a maximum of 1,675,633 in August, then falling to a minimum in December. Between April 2024 and January of this year, the difference in the number of users in this situation is not significant, falling from 1,565,880 to 1,564,203, a reduction of just 1,677 people in that period.

The number of people registered for primary care has been rising steadily over this nine-month period, increasing from 10,354,881 to 10,514,923 at the end of January, an increase of 160,042. The more than 1.5 million people who did not have a family doctor in January represent 143% more than the 641,228 thousand registered in September 2019, the month in which there was the lowest number since January 2016.

More than 70% of the 225 vacancies for newly specialised doctors in General and Family Medicine remained unfilled in the last competition, according to official data provided to Lusa at the beginning of the month by the Central Administration of the Health System (ACSS).

“Once the bidding process has ended – a special period, aimed at hiring newly specialized doctors for the areas of General and Family Medicine (MGF) and Public Health (SP), we inform that 63 vacancies were filled in MGF [28%] and nine in SP [60%]”, said the ACSS.

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.