Changing your GP after a move, in Lombardy

The move is over, and your GP is still on the other side of the city, or in another town. You notice the day you need a prescription: the surgery is forty minutes away, and you don't know whether you can choose one near home, or where to start.

You start with your address, not with the doctor. What follows comes from the pages of Regione Lombardia, the Electronic Health Record (Fascicolo Sanitario Elettronico) and the ASST Fatebenefratelli Sacco, checked on 3 November 2026. Outside Lombardy, the rules are those of your own region.

First question: do you really need to change?

In Lombardy you choose your GP from the doctors in the area you belong to (the "ambito territoriale"). If the move takes you into a different area, the list of doctors you can choose from changes with you.

You can keep your old GP, though. It is called a choice by exception (scelta in deroga), and the ASST Melegnano Martesana puts it this way: if you move your residence to another town, you can stay registered with your own family doctor. You need the application form for a choice by exception, filled in at the Scelta e revoca offices, and a signed statement from the doctor accepting you. There are two steps: first the doctor's ASST, then, if the answer is yes, the ASST where you now live.

Three questions are enough to decide:

• How far away the surgery is, with the transport you really use, at the times it is open.
• How often you go. Forty minutes once a year weighs less than forty minutes once a month.
• How much that doctor matters to you. If they have looked after you for years for something specific, the exception is worth the trouble of two offices.

Your address first, then your GP

This is where the order matters. The Electronic Health Record only shows you the doctors in your area, and your area depends on the address the ASST has on file. If that is still your old address, the list you see belongs to the home you have left.

The Region's answer, in the Health Record's FAQs, is this: if you have changed your residence or domicile, give your new details to the Scelta e revoca office and choose your new GP there. Or, once you have given them, choose the GP online. In Milan the registry office tells the ATS (the health agency) about your change of residence, as the article on who to tell when you change address explains, but the health procedure still asks for this step.

In Milan, "office" does not have to mean a queue. The city's three ASSTs (Fatebenefratelli Sacco, Santi Paolo e Carlo, Niguarda) share one website, sr.asst-fbf-sacco.it, for people who are resident or domiciled in the nine municipi. From there you can ask to update your personal details, to choose or change your GP and for a choice by exception. You need:

• a personal email address;
• a mobile phone, which gets a code by text message to confirm the request;
• your identity document and health card scanned as PDFs, front and back.

A member of staff deals with the request and replies by email. You go to the ASST Fatebenefratelli Sacco offices by appointment, and only when it cannot be done online. Outside Milan, you will find the channel on your own ASST's website.

One special case: if you are coming to Lombardy from another region, your first choice of GP is made at the office, and only from the second one onwards online. The Region's page suggests checking on the ASST website which documents you need, for example proof that you have deregistered from your GP in the previous region.

Choosing your new GP

With the right address on file, you change online through the Electronic Health Record, using SPID, CIE or CNS. You search the doctors available in your town of residence, also by name, and choose. Four things to know first:

• Doctors who have reached their maximum number of patients do not appear. You cannot choose them online. If you really want one of them, the Scelta e revoca office looks at your request, based on your reasons.
• At least thirty days must pass between two online choices, unless your GP has stopped practising.
• Without SPID or CIE, you can also change at participating pharmacies.
• For children under eighteen, you go through the Delegations (Deleghe) section of the Health Record. At fourteen, the move from paediatrician to family doctor can be done online.

The full list of GPs in Milan, including the ones you cannot see online, is on the ATS website, on the "Trova medico" (find a doctor) page.

When to do it, in your moving calendar

The order is always the same: first your change of residence with the council, then your address with the ASST, then the GP. The first step comes after you have moved, so the new GP can only come after you get the keys.

The time between the keys and the new GP needs covering before you leave:

1. Talk to your current GP. Tell them you are moving and ask how to handle prescriptions in the weeks while you switch from them to the new one.
2. Keep your health card and medicines aside. They travel with you, together with your documents, as the article on the things a box should never hold explains. With the card buried under the plates, you cannot ask for the address update or the new GP.
3. Write down the name of the GP you want. You look for them calmly before the move, checking the surgery and its hours, and on the day your address is updated you already know who to choose.

Once the change is done, check in the Health Record that the new name appears. From then on, prescriptions and certificates go through them, in the home where you now live.