2024 started with 1,647,700 people without a family doctor, ending with 1,522,545 users in this situation, a reduction of 125,155 people.

The number of people who were not on the lists of users of specialists in general and family medicine fluctuated throughout 2024, with August being the month with the highest value (1,675,633 people) and December the lowest (1,522,545).

Despite the reduction recorded at the end of the year, the approximately 1.5 million in December 2024 represent 137% more than the 641 thousand registered in September 2019, the month in which there was the lowest number of people without a family doctor since January 2016.

The year ended with 8,963,240 people having a family doctor assigned in mainland Portugal, with a total of 10,499,613 users enrolled in primary health care.

The health emergency and transformation plan, approved by the Government in May 2024, dedicates a strategic axis to family health, providing as an urgent measure the allocation of family doctors to waiting for users with the current capacity of the public sector but also strengthening the primary health care response in partnership with the social sector.

At the end of September, the Government approved a resolution that made it possible to make family doctors available to 75 thousand people at the Cascais hospital, which operates under a Public-Private Partnership (PPP) regime, a measure that is also included in the health plan that the executive is implementing.

It is also planned, in the first phase, to open 20 health centers managed by the social and private sectors, the so-called Model C Family Health Units, which will operate in Lisbon and Vale do Tejo, Leiria and Algarve, the regions with the greatest need of specialists in general and family medicine.

Last Thursday, an order was published in the Official Gazette with the rules for enrolling in primary health care and which provides that families with pregnant or chronically ill women and children up to 12 years of age have priority in the appointment of a family doctor.

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