Ambulance cost in Portugal: urgent and non-urgent

ACSS sets out the patient's right to transport within the limits the law defines, and separates it into two services:

• Urgent or emergency transport, provided by INEM, the national emergency medical institute.
• Non-urgent transport, for consultations, treatment, and discharge home from the emergency department or a hospital stay.

Non-urgent transport is tied to receiving care at SNS establishments or at private or social providers with an agreement, contract or convention with the SNS.

Source: ACSS (Administração Central do Sistema de Saúde): Transporte não Urgente de Doentes, read 16 October 2026.

The conditions sit in Portaria 142-B/2012, as amended several times since. ACSS summarises when the patient pays nothing:

• Economic insufficiency plus one further condition: a disability of 60% or more; a disabling clinical condition such as the motor after-effects of vascular disease, a transplant, serious heart or respiratory failure, serious visual impairment, oncological disease, chronic kidney disease, a high-risk pregnancy or cerebral palsy; or a child with a life-limiting illness.
• Prolonged, continuous treatment, such as chronic kidney failure, acute-phase rehabilitation in some cases, oncology and transplant patients, lifelong rehabilitation with motor disability of 60% or more, and palliative care through the national network, or other clinical situations a doctor justifies.

Source: ACSS (Administração Central do Sistema de Saúde): Transporte não Urgente de Doentes, read 16 October 2026.

ACSS also lists situations where non-urgent transport under these rules does not apply, including:

• victims of an occupational disease or a work accident;
• patients covered by a health subsystem, or by any public or private entity responsible for the costs;
• transport to a medical board assessment;
• transfers of an admitted patient between SNS establishments.

The second line matters for anyone with insurance: where another entity is responsible for your costs, the SNS rules point the bill there.

Source: ACSS (Administração Central do Sistema de Saúde): Transporte não Urgente de Doentes, read 16 October 2026.

Our guide to calling an ambulance in Portugal covers the numbers themselves, 112 and SNS 24.

On Regency's international health plans, local ambulance to hospital is listed as full cover on all four tiers and on Essential Health. International evacuation and repatriation is an optional add-on rather than part of the base plan, and air, sea and mountain rescue is always excluded. Pre-existing conditions are excluded, and what applies is whatever your policy wording says. We are an insurance introducer, not an insurer.