“The Government has approved a resolution that gives access to general and family medicine to 75,000 people who until now do not have a family doctor”, said the Minister of the Presidency, after the Council of Ministers.

According to António Leitão Amaro, this measure is foreseen in the Health Emergency and Transformation Plan, approved by the executive at the end of May, as part of the objective of expanding access to general and family medicine.

The assignment of a family doctor to these 75,000 people will be carried out by the end of the year at the Dr. José de Almeida hospital in Cascais, which is part of the National Health Service (SNS) under the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) scheme.

According to the minister, the expenditure of six million euros by the end of the year to contract the lists of patients with the hospital represents “24 euros less per patient, in comparative price, if they were served by other alternatives”.

This measure will cover, for the most part, patients of the Local Health Unit (ULS) Amadora-Sintra, but also of the ULS Lisboa Ocidental.

Considered one of the main problems in accessing the NHS, the lack of family doctors has been worsening in recent years, with the number of people without a general and family medicine specialist increasing by around one million since 2019.

According to data from the NHS transparency portal, in August 2019, 644,077 people did not have a family doctor, a number that increased to 1,675,663 last month, a difference of 1,031,586 users.

The minister acknowledged that it is “true” that 75,000 people are a small percentage of the universe of more than 1.6 million people without a family doctor, but considered that this total represents one of the “very heavy legacies” received from the previous socialist government and that it will “take time to resolve”.

This is “a new measure, using the capacity of the NHS, but in a PPP model”, said António Leitão Amaro, highlighting that the Government has “no dogma or ideological trauma” and that it intends to “serve those who are not served” by a family doctor.

The minister added that this scheme will start operating by the end of this year, but that it was created with the “vocation and perspective of its extension”, based on the assessment of the quality of user access and savings in expenditure.

António Leitão Amaro also mentioned that the scheme now approved “protects the existing capacity in other units of the National Health Service”, since the Cascais Hospital cannot recruit doctors who have been linked to the two ULS in the last three months.