The order, which comes into force on April 1st, says that the allocation of family doctors to waiting patients with the current capacity of the public sector constitutes one of the urgent measures of the Health Emergency Plan.

“It is, therefore, necessary to clarify the concepts relating to access and registration in the National Health Service, especially in primary health care, with the aim of simplifying and managing it, with the aim of promoting efficiency and accessibility for all the beneficiaries of the SNS”, says the order signed by the Secretary of State for Health Management, Cristina Vaz Tomé.

In relation to the previous order, of February 2, 2023, the age of children to have priority in the appointment of a family doctor increased from two to 12 years old.

According to the diploma, registration in primary health care is carried out by registering the user in the National User Registry (RNU), which assigns a unique, national and definitive number, called the national user number (NNU).

Registration is done at a functional unit of the respective local health unit and requires updated registration in the National User Registry.

Users registered with primary health care are eligible for a family health team, with three possible categories for registration: with team, without team, or without team by choice.

“Users who are without a family health team by choice may, at any time, request their assignment”, states the diploma.

With regard to the user's registration with a family doctor, the order states that care must be taken to integrate waiting lists according to the specialist's available vacancies (family doctor/vacancy ratio), in order to allow all vacancies to be filled.

“The user's registration on the family doctor list must respect the regulated list ranges, and is carried out according to the availability of vacancies in the functional units of the respective local health unit in which they are registered”.

It also states that user registration is carried out by prioritising registration at home, so that they are associated, preferably, with the same family doctor.

“Without prejudice to the provisions of the previous paragraph, families with pregnant users or users with multimorbidity, chronic illness or children up to 12 years of age have priority in the assignment of a family doctor”, he adds.

According to the order, foreign residents and national and foreign non-residents, registered with a family doctor, without a record of a medical consultation in primary health care in the last five years, become eligible for reformulation of the family doctor assignment.

It also highlights that the sporadic contacts of users with a unit other than the one where they are registered are not taken into account in the constitution of the family doctor's lists.

Around 1.5 million people do not have a family doctor.