Courtesy / ULS São João
Requests for medical assistance abroad approved. Patients have access to highly differentiated centers.
There are many Portuguese people who try to have a medical treatment abroadwhere they believe they will receive more effective assistance. And some succeed.
Over the last three years, it has increased the number of approvals of these requests, by the Directorate-General for Health (DGS).
In 2023 out, 470 requests approved of Medical Assistance Abroad (AME). There were 383 in the previous year and 351 in 2021.
The figures for the Central Administration of the Health System are presented by .
These treatments abroad are the last hope for many patients, with exceptional clinical cases; proceed to treatments that do not exist in Portugal; or it could also be a way of doing two fixes urgent in just one surgery.
All these movements are fully paid for by the National Health Service (SNS).
The number of treatments abroad has increased but costs went down: in 2023 the SNS spent 2.4 million euros on these cases. It is the lowest value in the last five years – it reached more than double in 2019.
This downward trend, explains the newspaper, will be related to the destination and the type of treatment that patients need.
More than half of authorizations last year were related to medical genetics. Abroad laboratory tests, molecular or genetic studies, for diagnosis or confirmation of genetic or metabolic diseases.
The majority of patients go to specialized centers located in Spain, France, the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy and Switzerland.
