Start here: which of the two systems is yours
Portuguese dental cover works in one of two ways, and almost every question people ask us reduces to not knowing which one applies to them.
Network cover. The clinic has an agreement with the insurer. You pay only your share at reception, and the rest is settled between the clinic and the insurer. You never handle the paperwork.
Reimbursement. You pay the full amount at the clinic. We give you an itemised invoice listing every procedure with its code. You submit it to your insurer and they pay part of it back into your account.
Neither is inherently better. Network cover means less money up front and less admin. Reimbursement means a free choice of clinician, treatment plan and materials, which matters more than it sounds when the work is implants or orthodontics. Many policies offer both, at different rates.
The practical consequence: under reimbursement, the amount you get back depends on your policy, not on us. We can tell you exactly what the treatment costs. We cannot tell you what your insurer will pay, because we do not have access to your policy terms. Check that with them before you start.
The insurers you are likely to have
If you are employed in Portugal, your cover almost certainly comes through your employer, and it will be one of these.
Multicare is the health insurance brand of the Fidelidade group and one of the largest networks in the country. Médis is the other name you will see constantly, with several protocol plans attached to it — Médis CTT for people connected to the postal service, and MEO Médis sold alongside MEO telecoms packages. AdvanceCare is not an insurer at all: it manages provider networks on behalf of several insurance companies, so your card may say AdvanceCare while your actual policy is with someone else. Future Healthcare manages the network branded Saúde Prime — same system, two names, and a frequent source of confusion at reception.
ADSE is different in kind. It is the health scheme for Portuguese public sector workers — civil servants, teachers, magistrates — and their dependants. If you are a foreign national working in the Portuguese public sector, this is probably yours.
There are also occupational schemes: the Caixa Geral de Depósitos social services for bank employees and pensioners, SAMS Quadros for banking sector staff, and EDP Sãvida for employees and retirees of the EDP energy group.
What to bring
Your insurance card, physical or in the insurer's app, and photo identification. If the policy is through your employer, bring the policy number too — it makes the check at reception much faster.
That is genuinely all. You do not need a referral, and you do not need to have registered with us in advance.
What we do before treatment starts
We check what your specific plan covers, and we give you a written quote with your share broken down procedure by procedure, before anything begins.
This matters because plans under the same brand name are not the same. Two colleagues at the same company can hold Multicare cards with different annual limits and different lists of covered procedures. We do not assume; we check.
If your insurer is not on the list
We issue itemised invoices with the description and code of every procedure performed, which is the document that most insurers — Portuguese or international — require to process a reimbursement claim. If you are an expat holding an international policy, that is the route that will work.
Send us the name of your insurer before you book and we will tell you how it works here.
Reading the detail
Each of the agreements above has a page in Portuguese with the specific conditions, what to bring and how payment is handled: see all insurance agreements. If Portuguese is heavy going, message us and we will walk you through your one in English.
