PPG Minutes: 30th July 2025

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Time: 6:00pm to 7:30pm
Location: SMA Medical Centre

Present

• Patients: 1 patient attendees in total (Patient attendees not named due to GDPR)
• Andy Agathocleous (AA) & Mumtaz Patel (MP) Co- chairs
• Dr Patel - Lead GP and Hurley Group Partner
• Nick Christou (NC) Senior Practice Manager
• Apologies: Waltham Forest Carers First - Renee Lindsey-Warner

Meeting Minutes

• The minutes of the last meeting were reviewed and accepted by all the attendees of today's meeting as a true record.  
• Copies of the minutes were made available at the meeting and are available to all patients on the PPG area of the SMA practice website. 
• Action: (NC) The minutes from today's meeting to be uploaded onto the PPG area of the SMA practice website

Guest Speaker

Dr. Patel hosted a question and answer session allowing patients the opportunity to ask questions on health topics and any concerns they have with the day to day running of the practice.  

• Dr Patel is at the practice on Monday and Wednesday afternoons providing clinical sessions.  
• Patients are unable to pre-book on-line face to face GP appointments as patients are triaged on the day and filtered to the appropriate Clinician, as they may not require a face to face GP appointment.  
• Patients should only request repeat medication they require.  
• From August 2024 all e-consults are triaged by a GP and prioritised accordingly.  

Action: Dr Patel to attend the next PPG meeting 

Practice Update

• Funding has been approved to build an additional upstairs GP consultation room that is due for completion in September 2025, there are currently eight GP consultation rooms. Nine GP consultation rooms will allow for additional GP consultations.
• Doctors: Dr. Sanjay Patel - Lead GP & Partner (Male), Dr Shehla Qureshi - Associate Partner (Female), Dr Rajarajeswari (Rajee) Venkateswaran (Venkat) Salaried GP (Female), Dr Sara Shuaib - Salaried GP, (Female), Dr Saqba Arif - Salaried GP (Female), Dr Sudam Ghosh - Salaried GP (Male)
• Dr Henry Edung has retired.
• SMA is a training practice and we have One ST2 and one ST3 trainee doctors at the practice.
• Practice Nurses - Josephine Laungani, Tina Abraham and Health Care Assistant Donna Westwood.
• Pharmacists - Sajida Kazi, Noor Bukhari, Uma Solanky (Maternity cover), Ana Pouzon (Pharmacy Technician).
• Paramedic - Ashley Tinham - Social Prescriber - Zakia Ali - First Contact Physiotherapist - Lipi Halder  
• Importance of completing a NHS GP survey.
• A PPG event with practices in our PCN (Manor Practice and the Orient Practice). 
• Action: NC to provide a further update at our next PPG meeting.

PPG Update

AA presented feedback from the 25 patient surveys completed at the PPG event on Saturday 21 June 2025.  

• Q.1 In the last six months have you requested and received a GP face-face appointment ?  
  • Yes 76% - No 20% - Other 4% (Question not answered)  
• Q.2 When you last contacted the practice, how long did you have to wait on the telephone to speak to the call taker?  
  • 1-5 Minutes 35% - 5-10 minutes 45% - 10-15 minutes 15% - Other 5%  
• Q.3 How would you rate the service you receive from the practice in general.  
  • Very Good 32% - Good 52% - Neither Good or Poor 16%  
• Q.4 Was the Healthcare professional you saw or spoke too good at listening to you during your last general practice appointment ?  
  • Very Good 40% - Good 56% - Neither good or Poor 4%  
• Q.5 Would you like to receive information about the Patient Participation Group Events and Meetings if YES please provide ?  
  • 16 patients have completed this section agreeing to receive information about PPG and meetings.  
• Q.6 Please list below any suggestions, recommendations or improvements that you would like to see at the SMA medical centre.  
  • Difficult to obtain face to face appointments and unable to book appointments online.  
  • I would like to see a Doctor without reception staff telling me to go on-line.  
  • Online consultations to stop as they are mostly pointless.  
  • Paper copy of blood forms to be replaced with an email version.  
• Q.7 Overall how did you find today's event?  
  • Excellent 20% - Very Good 40% - Good 40% - Poor 0 - Very Poor 0

Health Awareness Event

We agreed after consulting with today's PPG meeting attendees to trial the next PPG Health Awareness Day on a weekday. The reasoning behind this was to see if specialist attendance such as Heart Foundation and SMA patient attendance would increase. Patients at the meeting said they would like to see at the next PPG Event Dr Patel, health checks to include blood pressure and diabetic checks, Diabetes UK, Stroke UK, Carers, Social Prescribers and first aiders. 

PPG Update

• A live demonstration was shown to the patients at today's PPG meeting on how to access their medical records using Patient Access and how to navigate the SMA practice website to locate the PPG area.  
• The PPG chairs are recommending that all SMA patients obtain a password from the practice so that they can access and log into Patient Access to view their medical records and order repeat medications.  
• SMA patients can communicate directly with the PPG chairs by sending an email to smappgchairs@gmail.com regarding NON HEALTH RELATED TOPICS relating to the practice or NHS. The practice will not be able to access the emails you send to this email address.  
• Posters have been displayed in the reception area of the practice with the contact telephone numbers for FedNet WF who provide GP services outside the normal opening hours of the practice including weekends. Blood test appointments can also be booked by calling FedNet directly on 0208 519 3999.  
• AA represents the practice as chair of the SMA PPG at Health Watch Waltham Forest meetings where discussions are taking place on how to develop a strong PPG, complaint processes, and introduce the electronic blood test form.  
• Health Watch Waltham Forest would be closing in 2026.  
• Representatives from other GP practices at the Healthwatch meeting were complaining they were not able submit e-consults after 10:30am and did not have a functioning PPG.  
• The Comely Bank blood test centre has replaced the St James Street medical centre which is now permanently closed. 

Social Prescribing newsletter article. 

Health Awareness Event organised by the PPG at the SMA Medical Practice (Leyton Collaborative PCN), Leyton E10 on 21 June 2025.  

SMA Medical Practice and Patient Participation Group (PPG) welcomed their patients to the Health Awareness event at the surgery on Saturday 21 June 2025 afternoon. There was great attendance despite the hot weather. Patients were able to access one-to-one support including in-house health checks by nurses and GPs; stalls by Carers First; Social Prescribing and lots of useful information and booklets for various health conditions such as cancer, heart disease and diabetes. Light refreshments were provided, and it was an informative day for the patients to get to know more about specific health conditions; health and wellbeing related community activities as well as finding out more about the surgery's services. 

Work in Progress

1. E-consult timings are 6am to 8pm 5 days a week. There was a discussion about whether the timings could revert back to 7 days a week 24 hours a day for patients who have a health concern. No plans at present to extend e-consult timings as the practice already provides substantially more availability for e-consults than most GP practices..  
2. Negotiations are ongoing with the practice manager to reinstate on-line pre-booked face to face GP appointments & messaging services.  
3.  Why are promotional events such as PPG invites, patient surveys, pick up blood test forms, submit blood pressure readings and vaccination text message reminders to patients being recorded as consultations on the patient's medical records.  

Action: NC to provide further updates to points 1-3 at the next PPG meeting. 

Next PPG Meeting

Thank you all for all your input and support into today's meeting especially to Dr Patel.  

We look forward to seeing you all at the Health Awareness Event TBC at the SMA medical centre.