Professor Fiona Wilcox concluded on Wednesday at Westminster Coroner's Court that the lack of anticoagulation at the Lister Hospital probably contributed to Lady Joan Branson’s death. The coroner said the 80-year-old, who was admitted on 17 November after a fall weeks earlier on Necker Island, would likely have survived if she had received the preventative treatment.
Wilcox said, “I do find her death would have likely been prevented and the lack of anticoagulation did cause or contribute to her death probably,” after hearing evidence about the period between admission and her death on 24 November last year. The finding points to the gap in care during those seven days, when she received no prophylactic anticoagulation despite the clot risk identified at the inquest.
Westminster Coroner's Court
Dr George Adams told the inquest that she was “extremely high risk” and said “the biggest risk factor by far was her immobility and her fracture”. That evidence matched the medical sequence described at the hearing: a fall, reduced movement, then deep vein thrombosis that led to a pulmonary embolism and cardiac arrest at the hospital in Chelsea, west London.
The hospital’s admitting doctor, Dr Basir Kunduzi, did not complete a bleeding risk assessment on the day of admission. In practical terms, that assessment is the step that helps decide whether preventative anticoagulation can be started safely, so its absence left the treatment decision incomplete from the start.
Professor Fiona Wilcox
Wilcox also said it was not a case of neglect and that there was not an absence of treatment. That leaves a narrow but important distinction: the coroner found a harmful omission in prevention, while stopping short of saying the overall care crossed into neglect.
Sir Richard Branson described Lady Joan Branson as the “shining star around which our family's universe has always orbited.” For readers following the inquest, the unresolved point is simple: why the hospital did not provide prophylactic anticoagulation after admission, or complete the bleeding risk assessment that would have guided that decision.
