The present article explores management control systems in the Portuguese public primary healthcare. To do so, a performance management framework was used to capture and analyse in an organized and profound way the data collected. Key members of each organization were interviewed and internal documents were collected and analysed.
In general, it can be said that the initial proposed objectives were achieved. This study was able to analyse the way primary healthcare organizations operate, understand how their staff is assessed and check if the law was, or not, being followed, opening avenues for future research.