New Patient Registration

If you live within our practice area you are welcome to register with us and our reception staff will be happy to guide you through the procedure. Eligibility can be quickly confirmed from your address so it would help if you could provide proof by way of a recent utility bill. We also require one form of photographic ID.

You will need to complete a registration form (GMS1) and a health questionnaire which will provide useful information whilst we wait for your medical records to arrive from your previous doctor.

The system for transfer of medical records, is that your previous surgery must send them back to the Central Services Agency in Belfast, who then send them to us. This generally takes 6-8 weeks (however we have no control on the time period), so if you are on regular medication, please ask your previous surgery for a Summary printout, which lists medication and major medical problems. If you joining Dromara Surgery from a practice outside Northern Ireland, notes will take much longer to get - sometimes we do not receive them.  

Medical treatment is available from the date of completion of the registration forms - a member of reception staff will go through the forms with you to ensure they are completed, and so there are no delays processing your registration (for example, if the form was returned to us from the Health Board). As mornings are busy dealing with patients, we carry out these in the afternoons strictly by appointment. Please contact reception for further information.

Please note, if registering a new baby, the baby must be on our system prior to arriving for 8 week injections.

Guide to GP Services

The Royal College of General Practitioners has produced a useful guide for patients about the services on offer at GP Surgeries and how to access them.  You can download the guide below.

A Patient Guide to GP Services

Practice Area

The practice has revised the practice area. New patients will only be taken from within the revised practice area shown on the practice area map below. Existing patients residing outside the practice area will be kept on the practice list and their new babies will be allowed to join the practice.

However existing patients moving from outside the practice area and remain to reside outside the area will be removed from the practice list and told how to register with another practice. The practice area is defined as the area within the line drawn. Anything outside the boundary line is outside the practice area.

Online 'Pre-Registration' With The Practice

This feature may be available in future, however at the moment you will have to call the surgery and make an appointment to go through the registration forms.

The reception staff will be able to advise you of what documentation you will need to bring with you to the appointment. 

Non-English Speakers

These fact sheets have been written to explain the role of UK health services, the National Health Service (NHS), to newly-arrived individuals seeking asylum. They cover issues such as the role of GPs, their function as gatekeepers to the health services, how to register and how to access emergency services.

Special care has been taken to ensure that information is given in clear language, and the content and style has been tested with user groups.

Open the leaflets in one of the following languages

English	Urdu
Albanian	Hindi
Arabic	Lithuanian
Bulgarian	Polish
Chinese (Cantonese)	Portuguese
Chinese (Mandarin)	Spanish
Russian	French
Turkish	Punjabi
Gujerati	Somali
Croatian	Bengali
Farsi

Temporary Registration

If you are ill while away from home or if you are not registered with a doctor but need to see one you can register as a temporary patient.

You can be registered as a temporary patient for up to three months. This will allow you to be on the local practice list and still remain a patient of your permanent GP. After three months you will have to re-register as a temporary patient or permanently register with that practice.

To register as a temporary patient simply contact the local practice you wish to use. Practices do not have to accept you as a temporary patient although they do have an obligation to offer emergency treatment. You cannot register as a temporary patient at a practice in the town or area where you are already registered, or if you are still living at your usual address.

As a rule of thumb, we will not see patients whose usual GP is within an hours drive from Dromara, as we consider this is a reasonable distance to travel - only exception would be in a life-threatening emergency [e.g. someone needing oxygen while awaiting an ambulance]