Tiago Petinga / Lusa
The president of the Private Hospitalization Association, Óscar Gaspar
The president of the Private Hospitalization Association admits there is a shortage of doctors, warns of risks to national sovereignty and does not hide skepticism regarding the return of PPPs.
The human resources crisis in health is no longer a exclusive problem of the SUS, says Oscar Gasparpresident of the Private Hospitalization Association (APHP), in an interview with .
According to Óscar Gaspar, private hospitals also face waiting lists increasing, especially in consultations, but already also in surgeriesand the lack of doctors became “an absolute priority, even national sovereignty“.
In the interview with TSF and Jornal de Notícias, Gaspar was direct: “If you know where there is health professionals so we can hireplease tell us.”
Irony serves to illustrate the seriousness of a situation that affects the entire system. Dermatologists, psychiatrists, child psychiatrists and anesthesiologists are among the most deficient specialties.
Em dermatologywaiting times are particularly significant, aggravated by the fact that more and more doctors refuse to treat patients with health insurance or ADSE — a sign that “the appreciation of medical acts is not adjusted” in some specialties, says Gaspar.
Portugal today has more than four million people with health insurance, in addition to more than one and a half million with public subsystems such as ADSE, PSP, GNR or Armed Forces.
The private sector, which currently has 130 hospitals, more than the public ones, responds to a constant acceleration searchdriven by the aging of the population and greater health literacy.
Even so, the SNS closed 2025 with 300 thousand people on the surgical waiting list and more than a million waiting for an appointment. Óscar Gaspar states, bluntly, that “Without the private, the public would have collapsed“, he states.
Already obstetricsthe numbers are revealing: around 3/4 of births in Lisbon already take place in private maternity hospitals, with the sector growing by around 6.7% per year and exceeding 16 thousand births in 2025. Hundreds of pregnant women were redirected by INEM to private units when the SNS was unable to respond.
Asked about the announcement of emergency closure of obstetrics in Barreiro, precisely where CUF will open a new hospital in 2028, Gaspar refused to comment on political decisionsbut was clear about the dynamics of the private sector: “It is not growing at the expense of the public, but in complementarity”.
It is precisely this complementarity that the president of APHP says is in historic lows. “We have never done so little activity with the public as today”, he admits, in a context in which trust between the two sectors was “diabolized” over the years.
Óscar Gaspar’s final message is one of alert, but also of availability. The private sector wants to do more, but requires conditions, and recognizes that the problem of lack of professionals is transversal and urgent.
“We are all in the same boat“, summarizes Gaspar. A simple phrase that says a lot about the state of health in Portugal.
