New convention regime until the end of the year to assign family doctors, says Minister

The Minister of Health announced today the implementation by the end of this year of a new convention regime to assign family doctors to patients, "another way" of expanding the coverage of general and family medicine.

"By the end of the year, a new system of agreements with family doctors will be launched to provide assistance to those who do not yet have a family doctor," said Ana Paula Martins, who is being interviewed this afternoon by the parliamentary Health Committee.

The minister told MPs that, in addition to the future Model C units, which will be managed by the social and private sectors, the new convention regime will constitute "another way of expanding general and family medicine coverage to those who need it most."

"We still have a lot to do in primary health care to effectively serve as the gateway to the NHS, especially to be able to cope with one of the biggest demographic shocks ever experienced by the Portuguese population," the minister acknowledged.

According to Ana Paula Martins, the rate of patient coverage with a family doctor is currently at 85.7%, “contradicting the downward trend of the last four years”.

Between April 2024 and August 2025, 326,000 more users had access to a family doctor, said the Minister of Health, adding that, due to demographic changes over the last seven years, the “resident foreign population has almost quadrupled”.

In this sense, the number of people registered and using the National Health Service at least once increased from 405,000 people in 2017 to more than 944,000 in 2024, said Ana Paula Martins at the procedural hearing.