My experience with private healthcare in Portugal

Street art in Viseu, Portugal

There is public healthcare in Portugal and to avail of it you require a special number, o número de utente. In our city, you have to book an appointment to apply for this number. We tried to book it in early December 2023 and received an appointment for the end of March 2024. In the meantime, however, I decided I was overdue a GP visit, annual bloods and a dental.

As a non-resident in Portugal, you’re required to have health insurance. I am a resident now but I’ve decided to continue paying €26.57 per month for my health insurance. So, I went ahead and booked myself in for a GP visit in the local private hospital.

I mosied on up to the hospital with 15 minutes to spare and very quickly realised I should have given myself more time. As with pretty much every other service in Portugal, you must take a ticket as soon as you arrive, and wait for your number to be called. This was just to check in downstairs and make any necessary pre-payments. Once you’ve checked in, you can go on up to your doctor’s waiting room. From what I can tell, each waiting room has its own procedure, you’ll either need to check in again or simply sit down and wait to be called. 

I won’t walk you through every detail of my ‘morning out’ at the hospital but I will say it was a very pleasant experience. I saw my GP and he booked me in for a couple tests - same day, same location. I just had to walk down to the Emergency Department to get my bloods done, with a wait time of about 10 minutes. They handed me a voucher for a ‘pequeno almoco’ (breakfast) which was the Portuguese version of an Irish tea and toast - a buttered roll and a coffee. 

My GP booked me in for a precautionary thyroid ultrasound, too, so I went up a couple floors to the Radiology Department for that. It was pretty busy, but even still, I was waiting for under an hour.  While I waited, I downloaded their app and booked myself in for a gynae appointment the next evening. After that, I went to the canteen for my complimentary breakfast and then headed home. Job done. It was all incredibly easy and incredibly efficient. Somehow, I actually had a good time at the hospital. Isn’t that the weirdest thing to say!?

On the other hand, I’ve heard that if you want to be seen in the public system, a GP appointment might have a wait time of several weeks. So our thinking is, since Luke and I are generally healthy, we’ll pay health insurance and book appointments in the private hospital for our yearly checkups and if we have an emergency, we’ll go to the public hospital.

I think it might be useful to give you a breakdown of the costs. From my limited understanding, these costs vary depending on whether or not you have health insurance and depending on your insurance plan.

GP visit: €35.00. It would have been €60.00 without insurance.

Bloods (including blood type, full blood count, liver function, kidney function, thyroid function, blood glucose, lipids, iron studies and vitamin D levels) and urinalysis: €108.56.

Thyroid ultrasound: €42.00.

Gynae appointment: €35.00

Pap smear with HPV testing: €110.00

Ultrasound: €25.00 - Don’t anyone get too excited! This ultrasound was just a quick look at my uterus lining and ovaries to make sure it all looked healthy and normal. There were no surprises on the scan!

Dental: My dentist gave me a special price for my first clean. €60.00 without insurance - (This was €15.00 per quadrant, which I’ve never heard of before, but I guess you can choose to do a quadrant of your mouth at a time). The normal price would have been €112.00 (€28.00 per quadrant) with insurance. I went back to get my four back teeth sealed. This was €152.00 (€38.00 per tooth) with insurance and would have been €180.00 (€45.00 per tooth) without.

Just keep in mind prescriptions are not free in Portugal, however my GP did tell me prescriptions are discounted with the numero de utente.

Overall, I had a very pleasant experience at the private hospital. I, like many many others, do not like the dentist’s. So, that was another story, but both the dentist and the technician were lovely and chatty. I was there for 30 minutes for each appointment, and I’d say 10 minutes were spent chatting. If I didn’t have to hear that awful screeching sound of the dental tools against my teeth or feel the pain of the cold water, I think my dental appointment would have been an enjoyable social activity.

I’ve decided to keep paying my health insurance for now. This is mainly for the ease of access to healthcare. I don’t have to wait weeks to be seen. I can book my appointments and see my test results on an app. But, if I did have an emergency, I would avail of the public services. 

I hope that was helpful for anyone considering a move to Portugal, or deciding whether or not to get insurance and use the private medical services here.

Until next time, take care!