Number of people without family doctors rises 29% in one year

The number of patients in Portugal without a family doctor has increased by 29% in a year, now amounting to almost 1.7 million, due to retirements and the lack of ability of the national health service to attract specialists, writes Lusa. According to the health service transparency portal, in April 2022 a total of 1,299,016 patients had no allocated family doctor, a figure that increased to 1,678,226 a year later. Given this, the number of patients accompanied by GPs dropped from around 9.1 million to just over 8.8 million in the same period, official figures indicate.