Health Service Lists - Clear out

Details

Last Updated on Tuesday, 13 November 2012 12:48

Written by Wendy Manning

Portugal's Health Service are having a clear out of Doctor's patient lists. 1.5 million residents in Portugal are registered at their local Centro de Saude but not on a Doctor's list due to the lists being full. It is known that many people on the lists have either left the country or died but the lists have never been updated.

This 'clean-up' process was trialled in Lisbon earlier in the year, and now is being rolled out throughout Portugal.

Starting on 2nd November 2012 the process will be carried out over the following 90 days, and starts with a letter.

This process is being applied to the category of people:

• you are registered with a family doctor, in other words if you have a named doctor at your Centro de Saude
• you have not had an appointment to see them in the past 3 years.

Letters will be send to all people who fall into this category, telling them that they will be removed from the list by the end of the process unless they make an appointment to see their doctor.

If you receive one of these letter and wish to stay on the Doctor's list (highly recommended) then you should immediately make an appointment to see your doctor. If you have not visited the doctor for the past 3 years then you really are due for a check-up anyway.

This process is scheduled to take place over 90 days from 2nd November 2012.

When the process is completed people who are registered at the Health Centre (Centro de Saude) but who are not allocated to a doctors list will then be moved onto a list, and those people will then be notified.

Hey Portugal will monitor this process and update this article with any important news.

Related Articles:

How to Register at the Centro de Saude

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