Portugal's national health system goes down, blocking prescriptions and patient records

A nationwide outage from the morning

On Monday, 19 October 2026, the information system of Portugal's Serviço Nacional de Saúde (SNS) went down, leaving doctors unable to issue prescriptions or open patients' electronic clinical files. The Federação Nacional dos Médicos (Fnam) said the problems began around 10:00 and reached several local health units (ULS), including those of São João, Matosinhos and Médio Ave. Joana Bordalo e Sá, the federation's vice-president, told Lusa at 10:30 that the system had been down for about 25 minutes and that the outage was probably national. Reports from other units kept arriving as the morning went on. Fnam says thousands of patients were left without consultations and medicines.

Prescriptions and records blocked

The Prescrição Eletrónica Médica (PEM), the platform doctors use to issue prescriptions, was offline, while the Registo de Saúde Eletrónico (RSE), which gives access to patients' clinical history, was also unavailable. Bordalo e Sá said the PEM was 'completely down', leaving doctors unable to issue a single prescription. The effect reached patients too. The SNS 24 app and portal were among the most affected citizen-facing platforms, with error messages saying the prescription service was temporarily unavailable and blocking access to the codes needed to collect medicines at pharmacies. Older people and patients with chronic conditions, who receive electronic prescriptions by SMS or app, were unable to get their medicines. In person, a patient at Vila Franca de Xira hospital could not attend a sleep consultation booked months earlier, and patients with appointments at the Carregado health centre were told they could not be seen.

Bordalo e Sá described the effect on her own work in the consulting room.

This limits our medical act, it is an insecurity in the consultations we are doing, and it delays all our work.

Cause and partial recovery

SPMS, the public body that runs shared services and IT for the health ministry, confirmed the failure and linked it to constraints at its data centre. Early reports said no cause had yet been given. By 12:00, SPMS said, some support systems for health centres and hospitals had been restored. Fnam told DN that the system had been out from 10:00 until about 12:30 and was still very slow after that. Much of the activity at hospitals and health centres was paralysed, with consultations, exams and treatments suspended across the country. According to Fnam's confirmation to SIC, the Portuguese Oncology Institutes (IPO) were the exception and were not affected.

In its statement, SPMS said the following.

The problem was identified immediately and the technical teams are working on the rapid restoration of services and support systems for the SNS.

Union blames the ministry

Fnam holds the Ministry of Health responsible and says the problem keeps recurring. Bordalo e Sá named the ministry directly, linking the outage to a long-running lack of modern tools.

Once again, this is the entire responsibility of the Ministry of Health, of Ana Paula Martins, who does not modernise and does not give us the appropriate tools.

She called the problem absolutely unacceptable and said it showed a lack of capacity to keep essential care tools running. The union says the failures are frequent and that, despite notifications, the problem has not gone away. Bordalo e Sá said that the patients who suffer most are the ones who have a consultation at a health centre or hospital that day.