“Hospital forces lesbian to die alone“

I found the allegations in this post terrifying. We tell people that the living will and power of attorney are important documents that will prevent this very thing from happening. If the hospital won’t pay attention to legally valid documents stating that someone is authorized to make medical decisions/recieve medical information about a partner–what do we tell them? How can they protect themselves? I doubt a hetero couple would have run into this problem–married or not, signed legal documents or not.