SINACC postponement welcomed by Portugal’s medical association

Portugal’s Ordem dos Médicos has welcomed the SINACC postponement, describing the decision to hold back the nationwide rollout of the new consultation and surgery access system as prudent and responsible. The medical association says the platform, formally the Sistema Nacional de Acesso a Consulta e Cirurgia, was still in testing and lacked the operational safeguards patients need.

What the SINACC postponement was meant to fix

SINACC was created by Decreto-Lei n.º 12/2026 on 22 January 2026. The system is designed to centralise and standardise waiting lists, enforce clinical priority against maximum guaranteed response times (TMRG), and track patient pathways more closely. Over time it is also meant to let patients choose where they are treated, including private and social-sector units, once waiting time thresholds are reached. It replaces the older SIGIC system, which keeps operating in the meantime.

A year of warnings before the delay

Pilot testing started in September 2025 at ULS Alto Ave, ULS Coimbra and IPO Lisboa. Through the first half of 2026 the Ordem dos Médicos raised concerns about coding tables, diagnosis-related groups, incomplete training and the lack of a full user manual. In late July it sent the Ministry of Health a twelve-point list of corrections and asked for the 1 August launch to be postponed.

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The Direção Executiva do SNS announced the delay on 31 July, and testing restarted on 3 August at ULS da Lezíria in Santarém. On 6 August the association published a communiqué based on a joint review of twenty-four opinions from its specialty colleges and clinical coding body. Bastonário Carlos Cortes has said a necessary reform only works when it is prepared with rigour, tested on the ground and accompanied by all professionals.

Why the waiting list numbers matter

Provisional data cited by the Ordem dos Médicos put 278,394 patients on the surgical waiting list in May 2026, with 87,246, about 31 percent, waiting more than 180 days. The association’s main worry is that reclassifying some procedures as pequena cirurgia, or minor surgery, would remove them from the formal LIC list and leave them invisible to monitoring. It warned this could hide tens or even hundreds of thousands of patients and create an artificial reduction in the lists without improving access.

IT readiness is uneven as well. By early August 38 of 39 local health units and two of three oncology institutes ran the SONHO hospital information system, while ULS Santa Maria and IPO Porto still needed an external supplier.

What happens next

The Ministry of Health has said it will review the definition of pequena cirurgia and the coding tables, while keeping the rules on additional surgical production in place. No new date has been fixed for nationwide rollout, and SIGIC remains the operational system during the extended testing window. For the Ordem dos Médicos the priority is that patient safety, traceability and clinical priority take precedence over a fast launch.