Private Hospital Revenue Reaches a Record €2.79 Billion in 2025 as Health-Insurance Take-Up Surges
Private and public-private hospitals billed a combined €2.79 billion in 2025, up 9.5%, as more residents lean on health insurance and private care, according to Informa D&B.
Portugal’s private hospitals are pulling in more money than ever, in a fresh sign that residents are increasingly paying to step around a strained public health service. Private operators and public-private partnership hospitals together billed a record €2.79 billion in 2025, according to a sector study by the business-data firm Informa D&B — a 9.5% jump on the previous year.
The analysis ties the growth to two reinforcing trends: more patients choosing private hospital care, and the steady spread of health insurance. Insurers have been the engine of that shift. Premium billing for health cover rose 17.5% in 2024 and a further 12.3% in 2025, reaching €1.782 billion last year.
A concentrated, fast-growing market
Portugal counted 131 private establishments in 2024, part of a national total of 242 hospitals and 35,397 beds. The for-profit slice of the private sector ran 64 hospitals with 4,537 beds as of April 2026, averaging about 71 beds per unit. The map is heavily skewed towards the two big cities: Porto accounts for 37% of private beds and Lisbon for 32%.
Ownership is tightly held. Just five operators controlled 92.2% of the private hospital market in 2025, while the five largest insurers wrote 82.5% of all health-insurance premiums — a degree of concentration that gives a handful of groups outsized influence over prices and capacity.
What it means for residents
For the growing number of foreign residents who rely on private clinics and hospitals, the figures underline how central private medicine has become to healthcare in Portugal. The Serviço Nacional de Saúde (SNS, the National Health Service) remains the backbone of the system and is free or low-cost at the point of use, but long waits for appointments, scans and surgery have pushed many households to take out insurance or pay out of pocket for faster access.
The record revenue is, in that sense, a double-edged number. It shows a private sector in robust health, attracting investment and expanding capacity. It also reflects the pressure on the public network: each percentage point of growth in private billing is, in part, a measure of demand the SNS has not been able to absorb. With insurance take-up still climbing and provision concentrated in Lisbon and Porto, the gap between the well-covered cities and the rest of the country looks set to widen rather than narrow.
