“Radiology exams constitute the third largest expense agreed with the SNS”, says the information about the monitoring of this area carried out by the Health Regulatory Authority (ERS).

According to the document, charges for the agreed radiology sector decreased by 14.8%, with around 106 million euros spent in 2022, 18 million less than in the previous year.

In the first half of 2023, the charges for this agreed sector were around 68 million euros, according to ERS.

According to the data now released, the SNS spent around 103 million in 2019, a value that dropped to 77 million in 2020 (the first year of the covid-19 pandemic), rising again to 124 million in 2021.

In November 2023, 870 establishments providing care in the area of radiology were registered with the ERS, 108 (12.4%) public and 762 (87.6%) of a private, cooperative, or social nature (non-public). More than half of non-public establishments have an agreement with the SNS (420).

In terms of access, ERS found that 149 municipalities in mainland Portugal do not have an agreed offer in terms of radiology (there were 152 in 2022) and, of this total, 117 do not have any non-public offer, with or without an agreement.

The health region with the lowest supply is Alentejo, with 34 municipalities without establishments in the area of radiology (72.3% of the municipalities in the region), while the municipalities with the highest number of non-public establishments are Lisbon (87), Porto ( 53), Coimbra (27), Cascais (18), Braga (17), Loures (16), Sintra (16) and Setúbal (15).