To mark World Health Day, the National Statistics Institute (INE) published a series of health indicators for the period between 2007 and 2017, the most recent year under analysis.

In that year, National Health Service hospitals provided more than 80% of emergency care, more than 70% of patient admissions and surgeries and about 65% of medical appointments.

"However, as in the previous year [2016], it was in private hospitals as a whole that this production increased most," noted the INE in a statement.

Private hospitals in 2017 saw a 3.6% increase in the number of operations, 4% in admissions and 4.5% in medical appointments. Still faster growth was seen in exams and other diagnostic procedures, at 7.1%.

In public hospitals or in those run by public-private partnerships, the number of operations rose 0.3% in 2017, of medical appointments by 0.6%, and exams and diagnostic procedures by 7.3%. The number of in-patients fell 0.7%, however.

In 2017, around 154 million diagnostic procedures were carried out in Portuguese hospitals, up 10.1 million from the previous year. About 91% of these (140 million) were in public hospitals, up 7.3% from 2016.