Pensioner sepsis death: Coroner warns over unmonitored transfer

Trust ordered to respond after transfer failures

A fortnight later, after she was moved 200 miles to Stepping Hill in Stockport, nearer her home, she died due to complications.

Coroner Adrian Farrow said the infection turned into sepsis, and warned the hospital after Wood went unmonitored for seven hours during the journey north.

An inquest at Stockport coroner's court heard, according to the Manchester Evening News, that she had developed a chest infection before the transfer.

Medics did not recognise it, and no medically trained staff were on board to monitor her.

What the pensioner sepsis inquest found

The two-day hearing in July concluded Mrs Wood died from an infection contracted in hospital. She had been recovering from her head injury.

Doctors recorded heart and organ failure driven by that infection, on top of her existing conditions.

Mr Farrow has sent a prevention of future deaths report to the trust that runs the Royal London Hospital. 

In it, he said: "There was no review of her condition and her fitness for transfer to a distant hospital on the day of her transfer on November 19, 2025, when the inquest found that she had begun to develop pneumonia."

The report also found her transport was never reassessed as her condition changed.

She went unmonitored for more than seven hours. Coroners issue these reports to prompt action on risks to future patients.

The trust has not yet said what changes it will make in response.

What caused Monica Wood's death?

The inquest recorded her cause of death as:

• Acute heart failure
• Organ failure affecting her liver, kidneys and lung
• Sepsis caused by pneumonia she developed in hospital
• Vascular dementia, peripheral vascular disease, high blood pressure and ischaemic heart disease
• The brain injury from her fall