The daughter of a former resident of The Plaza at Mililani assisted-living facility filed a lawsuit Friday for unspecified punitive and other damages, alleging the company’s negligence in caring for her mother.
Felicia Lum said when her 81-year-old mother, Andrea Aquino, entered the Plaza in June 2010 with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease, she was walking, eating and in good spirits. When she left the care home less than five months later, she was no longer able to walk or feed herself and generally had lost hope in living, said Lum.
"We feel there is no merit to this case and will contest it vigorously," Plaza attorney Edquon Lee said in an email.
The Plaza Assisted Living has been operating in Hawaii for almost a decade, caring for more than 1,500 residents, and has "enjoyed a flawless reputation," Lee said.
"Numerous residents and their families have expressed their appreciation and satisfaction with the Plaza over the years," he said. "The Plaza at Mililani is inspected regularly through the Department of Health and on the most recent inspection was deficiency-free. It is unfortunate Ms. Lum filed a lawsuit."
Lum said Aquino fell at least seven times during her stay at the Plaza. Aquino died five months after leaving the facility in March 2011 from pneumonia and sepsis, a condition in which the body has a severe reaction to bacteria or other germs, Lum said.
Lum said her mother broke her wrist during one fall and developed a severe bedsore and later methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, a staph germ that can be deadly.
The family paid $4,700 a month for Aquino’s care, Lum said.
"When she went in she was walking with a cane, she was still her happy self, energetic, still telling jokes," said Lum, who added she found her mother sleeping on a mattress soaked with urine during an unannounced visit. "When she left she was really, really sad. It’s almost as if she kind of gave up hope."
The lawsuit alleges that a few weeks after Aquino moved into the facility, which opened in 2010, she was found on the bathroom floor with lacerations to her skin and taken to the emergency room at Wahiawa General Hospital.
"She said, ‘Felicia, I called and I called and I called and nobody came,’" Lum said. "For her to say that she called and called and nobody came, I knew she was sitting there for a while."
She fell a second time the next day after returning to the Plaza. But the worst fall came later when she broke her wrist as she was trying to get up from the dining table with the help of a certified nursing assistant behind her who couldn’t say how the fall happened, the suit alleges.
"There were times that I went on to visit her and her TV and air conditioner wasn’t even turned on — something as simple as that," said Lum, who lost both her father and husband in recent years. "I wanted to desperately move her, but I couldn’t because of the MRSA. No one would admit her."
In an April 13, 2011, response to The Plaza at Mililani’s request to increase bed capacity to 138 from 128 and designate a fourth floor as a memory care unit, the Department of Health’s state licensing section said that although there were no deficiencies cited during an initial inspection, there were concerns regarding the "considerable number of falls occurring throughout the facility" and "issues as it pertains to the level of care and staffing."
The Plaza Assisted Living also operates The Plaza at Moanalua and The Plaza at Punchbowl. The lawsuit named Ukuwai LLC, doing business as The Plaza at Mililani, as the defendant.
Diane Ono of the Galiher DeRobertis Ono law firm is representing Lum in the lawsuit.
