Azores Gains 71 Doctors, New Medical Tech and Generous Pay

Many residents on the mainland may not realise it, but a quiet shift is under way 3 hours by plane west of Lisbon: dozens of newly minted doctors have just landed in the Azores, injecting fresh energy into an island health system that has long struggled to keep white coats from drifting back to the continent.

At a Glance: what is changing

• 71 resident physicians start work across São Miguel, Terceira and Faial

• 40 enter the mandatory general internship year; 31 begin specialty training

• New specialties arrive on Terceira and São Miguel, including Emergency Medicine

• Backed by €725 M in Recovery & Resilience Plan (PRR) funding allocated to the archipelago’s health service through 2026

• Package of wage bonuses, tax breaks and three-year retention rules aims to keep talent on the nine islands

Why mainland Portugal should care

For every patient waiting in Porto or Lisboa, there is an Azorean counterpart whose nearest MRI machine sits on another island. Strengthening the Regional Health Service (SRS) eases pressure on the national SNS by reducing the number of Azoreans flown to the continent for care. Better training conditions in the Atlantic could also lure specialists away from chronically overstretched urban hospitals.

Fresh talent spreads across nine islands

The cohort arriving this January is split into 40 doctors completing the common “ano de formação geral” and 31 placed directly in specialty programmes. They will rotate through the three hospitals—in Ponta Delgada (HDES), Angra do Heroísmo (HSEIT) and Horta—as well as the Unidades de Saúde de Ilha scattered throughout the archipelago.

HDES in São Miguel absorbs 17 new residents, Terceira’s hospital welcomes 2, while the island health units add 12 between them. Faial’s Hospital da Horta gains the remainder, a modest but symbolically important reinforcement for the smallest of the region’s three hospital centres.

Specialties that never existed here before

For the first time, Terceira is hosting residents in Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation and Pediatrics—disciplines crucial to an ageing population and to families reluctant to leave the islands for routine child care. Meanwhile, Ponta Delgada finally secures its first Emergency Medicine trainee, an area singled out by the Federação Nacional dos Médicos as suffering some of the worst vacancy rates nationwide.

These placements, officials argue, are more than a head-count exercise. They create a pipeline of island-trained specialists who might otherwise seek opportunities in Porto, Coimbra or abroad.

Money, modern kit and digital dashboards

Retaining those specialists hinges on more than goodwill. The regional government has leveraged PRR cash to finance a shopping list that includes robotic surgery systems, 21 new ambulances, 656 pieces of diagnostic equipment and 94 electric vehicles for home-care teams. A long-promised “Hospital Digital” platform—already signed up by 30 000 residents—lets users track emergency-room wait times and lab results from their phones.

Financially, doctors who commit to islands without hospitals can earn up to 45 % salary uplifts, coupled with lower IRS and VAT rates guaranteed to every Azorean taxpayer. A 2022 regional decree locks new hires into a three-year minimum stay; officials say roughly 50 physicians have been secured under the rule so far.

The retention hurdle

Yet numbers alone do not solve the archipelago’s chronic understaffing. Nationally, one-third of specialty training posts remained vacant last year, a reminder that Portugal faces a structural shortage. In the Azores, shortage lists still feature anesthesiology, obstetrics and orthopaedics, and unions warn that under-resourced emergency departments risk burnout.

Health-workforce researchers point to broader incentives—housing support, partner employment, school access for children—as decisive in remote settings. In 2025, orthopaedists in Terceira refused to cover night shifts, citing inadequate operating-theatre conditions. The new PRR-funded equipment will be watched closely as a litmus test of whether those concerns are being met.

What happens next

Regional Health Secretary Mónica Seidi frames the arrivals as proof of a strategy to make the SRS “modern, competitive and attractive”. If the combination of inflated pay packets, brand-new scanners and digital dashboards persuades enough interns to plant roots, the archipelago could evolve from training outpost to career destination—lightening the load on mainland hospitals in the process.

Mainlanders may feel little day-to-day impact, but Portugal’s ability to deliver care across its entire territory will hinge on whether these 71 new doctors decide to stay once the Atlantic sunsets and island life become routine.