Expenses on overtime and provision of services in the Unified Health System (SUS) maintained an upward trend. Last year, in total the SNS paid 745,565,116 euros.
According to data sent this Tuesday (April 14) to DN by the Central Administration of the Health System, the vast majority of these payments in 2025 went to doctor on duty – R$ 249.7 million -, in a measure that aimed to keep emergency rooms open.
In the case of nurses, R$10.3 million was paid to professionals.
In relation to health units, the one who had to invest the most to have clinicians available was the Algarve Local Health Unit with 21,591,474 euros.
According to the tables to which the DN had access, referring to the last three years, the SUS has always been paying more to be able to hire doctors, nurses and other services.
In 2023, doctors on duty received 191,771,034 euros and nurses 6,452,322. The following year, these values rose to 212,804,899 euros and 10,616,996, respectively.
In 2025, according to the Central Administration of the Health System, 249,710,134 euros were reached, in the case of doctors, and 10,373,832, in the hiring of nurses.
It is worth noting that if we divide the amounts paid by the hours worked, we come to the conclusion that, in the case of clinicians, the average was around 43 euros/hour.
Six million overtime hours
In addition to using contract doctors and nurses, the NHS has also seen spending related to overtime increase.
In this case, doctors worked 6.3 million overtime last year, which corresponded to a payment of 268,365,005 euros.
Nurses worked 5.9 million overtime hours, costing 129,020,149 euros.
Adding to these values those referred to in a item called “others” we learned that 6.1 million overtime hours and 81.4 million euros were needed in the SUS.
Also in overtime there has been an increase in expenses since 2023.
That year – bringing together doctors, nurses and “others” – an additional 16.9 million euros were paid into the SNS, which corresponded to a payment of 464.5 million euros.
In 2024, 17.8 million additional hours were added and a total of R$456.4 million paid.
Last year, there were 18.4 million hours and 478.7 million euros.
Algarve leads payments
In this SUS spending list, there is a local health unit that leads the spending: it is ULS Algarve.
In other words, to be able to meet the conditions to keep the emergency room open, it had to pay a total of 37.1 million euros: 21.5 million in staff and 15.6 million in overtime.
In fact, this is the only ULS that is in top 5 with regard to payments for both regular and overtime doctors.
In the case of service providers, this list includes in the top five the ULS do Oeste (14.6 million), Oeste (14.6), Médio Tejo (13.1) and Alto Alentejo (12.04).
As for overtime, this table is led by ULS of Coimbra (26 million), followed by Algarve (15.6), Santa Maria (13.9), Western Lisbon (10.4) and Santo António (10.3).
In a comment on the data released, the Central Administration of the Health System emphasizes that these payments allow: “To guarantee a timely response to users, avoiding worsening waiting times.” He also highlights that this is a way of “ensuring flexibility in the allocation of human resources in periods of greater demand.”
Leave a Reply