Portugal's SNS 24 Health Counters Reach 464 With Two New Ones in Cascais: What Staff There Can Do for You, and What to Bring

Portugal now has 464 Balcões SNS 24 (SNS 24 counters), walk-in desks where staff help people use the national health service's digital services, after two more opened in the municipality of Cascais. The government wants the network to reach 500.

The new counters are in the parish of São Domingos de Rana and in the joint parish of Carcavelos and Parede. They were inaugurated on Friday 2 October, Cascais council said, in the presence of the Secretary of State for Health Management, Francisco Pinheiro Catalão. The health service and the government announced the openings on 6 October (SNS, portugal.gov.pt).

• Carcavelos and Parede: Estação de Inovação Social, Rua das Clementinas, Loja 3, Parede.
• São Domingos de Rana: inside the junta de freguesia (parish council) building on Rua Dom Duarte Meneses.

The council says counters are also due soon in the parishes of Cascais and Estoril, and Alcabideche, without giving dates.

What a counter is for

The counters are one of four SNS 24 channels, alongside the phone line (808 24 24 24), the website and the app. The health service says the line answers more than 20,000 calls a day and the app has passed 14.5 million downloads. "Innovation is only truly transformative when it reaches everyone," Pinheiro Catalão said, regardless of age, social condition or digital literacy.

The official SNS 24 page on the counters (updated 1 October) describes a network built in existing local structures to cut the barriers people face with technology, or the lack of it. It offers two kinds of help.

Option one: you do it, with a helper beside you

In acesso facilitado (assisted access), you log in to the SNS 24 portal yourself, or call the SNS 24 line from the counter, and a mediador digital (digital helper) guides you. Everything on the portal is available this way, including:

• booking, cancelling or moving an appointment, and holding a teleconsultation;
• viewing tests, medical sick-leave certificates, proof of attendance and prescriptions;
• viewing and renewing your regular medication;
• requesting or viewing an autodeclaração de doença (self-declared sick leave);
• applying for exemption from user fees (taxas moderadoras) on grounds of low income;
• updating the email and mobile number on your health record;
• viewing your vaccination record, oral health record and dentist vouchers (cheques-dentista), and a child's health booklet;
• the testamento vital (living will) service, and recording your own health data;
• Contacto acessível, a video call service with Portuguese Sign Language interpretation.

Option two: staff do it for you

In acesso mediado (mediated access), a counter worker acts on your behalf through the health service's administrative system. This list is much shorter: booking an appointment, holding a teleconsultation, the low-income user-fee exemption request, and updating your email and mobile number. The SNS 24 page says the counter needs a printer for an authorisation covering the services provided there, but it does not spell out what you are asked to sign or show.

What to bring

For assisted access, the official page says you need one way to log in and a phone:

• the Chave Móvel Digital (Digital Mobile Key), or a Cartão de Cidadão (citizen card) and its PIN codes, or your Número de Utente de Saúde (health service user number);
• the mobile phone linked to your user number.

If the mobile on your record is out of date, staff can change it for you through mediated access. It is worth taking the identity document you registered with, as the page does not say what the counter may ask to see.

Why this matters for immigrants

Foreign residents can hold a user number without a Portuguese citizen card, which is issued to Portuguese nationals, and not everyone has set up a Chave Móvel Digital. The portal accepts a log-in with the user number and the linked phone, so a counter can get you into appointment booking, prescriptions or the fee exemption without either. The SNS 24 page adds that a Chave Móvel Digital can be activated online, by video call or at a service desk; our guide to activating the Chave Móvel Digital explains how.

Every way in starts from an existing registration, so a counter does not replace signing up with the health service. If you do not have a user number yet, our guide on registering with the SNS covers that first step.

Language is the open question. The official pages do not mention help in English or any language other than Portuguese; the only accessibility service they list is the sign language video call. A helper beside you can still point at the right button on a Portuguese-only screen.

The counters matter more as the phone line gets busier. Observador reported on 9 October that the line's average wait rose from 63 seconds in February to 282 seconds in June, citing the SNS Transparency Portal, and that a nurse on the line said some callers wait one to two hours at peak times, on Mondays and late on weekday afternoons. The health ministry's shared services body (SPMS) told the paper that callers at busy times should choose the callback option.

Finding your nearest counter

The SNS 24 counter page links to an official list of locations. It did not load when we checked on 9 October. Neither the ministry nor the council gives opening hours. An earlier list SNS 24 published in October 2023 put 245 of its 387 counters in parish councils; others were in municipal offices and Espaço Cidadão (citizen service) desks and some inside prisons, youth detention centres and care homes. Your junta de freguesia is a sensible place to ask whether there is a counter nearby and when it is staffed.