USF
Published 8 November 2026, 22:47
USF — Unidade de Saúde Familiar (family health unit at a health centre)
Part of a Centro de Saúde: a team of doctors, nurses and administrative staff working under a contract with performance targets and receiving bonuses for meeting them. A patient is registered not with “the health centre in general” but with a particular unit, and the family doctor is assigned within it. A USF usually has its own email address, which is used for booking appointments and sending out utente numbers.
Where you come across it. Registering with a health centre, booking an appointment with a family doctor, correspondence about the utente number and vaccinations.
One Centro de Saúde may have several USFs and UCSPs with different email addresses and different appointment rules. A letter sent to the “wrong” unit most often just gets passed around in circles.
Official website: sns.gov.pt/institucional/unidades-de-saude