Around 106,000 people in the Algarve do not have an assigned family doctor
Nearly 23,000 residents in the Algarve are set to be assigned a family doctor as the Local Health Unit (ULS) of the Algarve prepares to hire 13 new General and Family Medicine specialists.
The recruitment of these doctors is part of a national placement process for medical professionals and will help address one of the region’s most pressing healthcare concerns – the lack of primary care access. The newly hired physicians will be distributed across the Algarve’s three health centre groupings (Agrupamentos de Centros de Saúde, or ACeS): eight will join ACeS Central (in central Algarve), three will be based in ACeS Barlavento (western Algarve), and two in ACeS Sotavento (eastern Algarve).
Currently, around 106,000 people in the Algarve do not have an assigned family doctor. With these new hirings, ULS Algarve estimates that over 21% of those patients – around 22,750 – will now be assigned one.
However, the regional health authority had initially planned to hire even more GPs. Nationally, only 231 of 389 newly graduated family doctors opted to work within the National Health Service (SNS). In the Algarve, just 13 of the 34 available positions were filled, leaving 21 vacancies unclaimed.
The National Federation of Doctors (FNAM) has criticised the scale of the recruitment drive, arguing that the Ministry of Health should have opened around 1,000 positions to meet existing demand. Of the 585 family doctor roles offered across the country in the latest competition, FNAM described the number as “far too low.”
