Nearly 87,000 SNS Patients Had Waited Longer Than the Law Allows for Surgery by the End of July, and Half the List at Lisbon's São José Is Overdue
Official SNS data show 30.5 percent of the 284,210 people waiting for planned surgery are past the legal maximum, up from 28.2 percent a year ago. In the north it is under one in five; in the Algarve, one in two.
At the end of July, 86,755 people on the SNS (Serviço Nacional de Saúde, the national health service) surgical waiting list had already waited longer than the law allows, according to the latest monthly figures on the SNS Transparency Portal. That is 30.5 percent of the 284,210 patients waiting for a planned operation, and 11,114 more than in July 2025.
July is the latest month the portal has published. Our analysis of its hospital-by-hospital series shows how unevenly the delay falls. In parts of the north, fewer than one patient in ten is overdue. In the Algarve and several Lisbon hospitals, it is around one in two.
What the legal maximum is
The limits are set by Portaria 153/2017, the ordinance on maximum guaranteed response times (tempos máximos de resposta garantidos, or TMRG). For ordinary planned surgery the limit is 180 consecutive days from the date the operation is prescribed. It falls to 60 days for priority cases, 15 days for very high priority cases and 72 hours for deferred urgent ones. Cancer and heart surgery have their own, shorter limits: 60 and 90 days respectively at normal priority. The portal publishes the number of patients still within these limits for each hospital each month, and the rest are counted as overdue.
A slow climb
The overdue count has grown each July for three years: 68,747 in 2023, 74,122 in 2024 and 75,641 in 2025. It jumped at the end of last year, reaching 86,783 in December and 87,848 in January. It has stayed between 84,000 and 88,000 every month since, peaking at 88,077 in June. The share overdue rose from 28.2 percent in July 2025 to 30.5 percent this July. The list itself grew by about 15,500 people over the same twelve months.
Where the waits are longest
The ULS de São José (São José Local Health Unit), which runs São José and several other central Lisbon hospitals, has the most overdue patients by far: 11,819 of the 23,481 on its list, or 50.3 percent. A year ago the figure was 9,969. Coimbra (6,981 overdue), the Algarve (5,819), Santa Maria in Lisbon (5,758) and Almada-Seixal (5,427) follow. Santa Maria's overdue count has risen by about 70 percent in a year, from 3,372.
By share, the worst performer is Loures-Odivelas, where 63.7 percent of the 5,453 patients waiting are past the limit. The Alentejo Central unit (51.8 percent), the Algarve (51.2 percent), São José (50.3 percent) and Estuário do Tejo (48.2 percent) come next.
At the other end, only 6.5 percent of patients at the ULS do Baixo Mondego are overdue. The figure is 7.9 percent at both Matosinhos and Tâmega e Sousa, and below 10 percent at Entre Douro e Vouga, the Litoral Alentejano and the Cascais hospital.
The regional gap is stark. In the north, 17.6 percent of the 104,109 patients waiting are overdue, and in the centre 25.6 percent. The figure rises to 37.4 percent in the Alentejo and 41.9 percent in Lisbon and the Tagus Valley, where 46,002 people are past the limit, more than half the national total. In the Algarve it is 51.2 percent.
What the figures do not show
The series counts patients across all planned surgery. It shows how many of them are overdue, not how long they have waited beyond the limit, and the portal does not break the list down by specialty.
In September we reported that Porto's Santo António scheduled 193 extra operating sessions, none of them in orthopaedics or neurosurgery. For the supply of doctors further down the system, see our report on family doctor retirements.
