Almost 2.000 family doctors are currently training in Portugal, the Minister of Health said today, recalling that many clinicians will reach retirement age by the end of the year.
“By the end of 2024, we will still be faced with many doctors reaching retirement age and, despite the recruitment of doctors that we are doing, we are training many more family doctors than were trained before, today we have almost two thousand family doctors in training”, Manuel Pizarro told journalists after the transfer of skills in the health area of the municipality of Oeiras was formalized.
The government official recalled that only at the end of the year will it be possible to obtain “significant gains in assistance capacity”.
Regarding the last competition aimed at doctors who finished their specialty in the second season of 2023, the Minister of Health noted that of the 73 who finished, 62 were placed in the National Health Service (SNS).
“In addition to these 62, there were still 40 doctors who were outside the SNS who agreed to stay, which means we recruited 102 [doctors]. It is a drop in the bucket for our needs, but it is the fixation of all that was available”, he underlined.
According to Manuel Pizarro, the competition launched in December 2023 selected “86% of the doctors for whom it was intended”.
“This competition aimed to recruit the 73 doctors who completed their specialty to the SNS. The rest is additional gain. Yes, we opened 900 vacancies, because it is my decision that has helped a lot. The decision is to open all available vacancies”, he indicated.
The Government opened 924 vacancies for family doctors, according to the list published last week in Diário da República, indicating only 143 candidates for the competition launched in December.
“We already did this in May [2023]. At the time, we recruited 91% of doctors who had completed their specialty. We repeat now. We recruited 86% of [recently graduated] doctors. These are the highest retention rates for doctors in recent years,” he said, adding that the Government knew that “there were no doctors to fill these vacancies.”
In the same competition, 29 vacancies were also opened for the public health specialty, with 12 young doctors being admitted.
The number of users without an assigned family doctor increased by 9,8% during 2023, rising from 1.570.018 in January to 1.724.859 in December, indicates the SNS transparency portal.
According to data consulted by the Lusa agency, between January 2016 and December last year, the month that recorded the lowest number of users without a family doctor was September 2019 (641.228), while the highest number was reached in May 2023 ( 1.757.747).
Between the minimum of September 2019 and the maximum of May 2023, the number of users without this specialist assigned increased by 174%.
On the other hand, the number of users registered in primary health care went from 10.574.055 in January 2023 to 10.570.863 in December, a decrease of 3.192 registered.
Between June 2020 and June 2023, the increase in subscribers was constant, from 10.267.818 to 10.622.877 respectively, which represents 3,4% more users.
The transparency portal also indicates that, by the user's own choice, 22.069 did not have a family doctor in December 2023, 27,8% less than in January of the same year (30.585) and 10,7% of the total without a family doctor. assigned family.
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