Lisa Pond died alone in a Florida hospital in 2007.

During her final frantic hours of life, as doctors struggled to contain the damage from a burst aneurysm, her partner of 18 years and three of their four children were kept from her side. The reason? Her partner, Janice Langbehn, is a woman.

Of all the indignities heaped upon same-sex couples every day in this country, surely the cruelest and most unnecessary are arbitrary hospital rules that do not recognize their kinship status.

Early this month, President Barack Obama signed an executive order prohibiting discrimination by hospitals against gay and lesbian couples.

It's a good first step. But it will take more than the president's signature to end the kind of dehumanizing treatment that all too often has been experienced by gay and lesbian couples.

Most of us take it for granted that should illness or injury strike someone we love, we can be with him or her to offer comfort and support.

But in at least a quarter of U.S. hospitals, same-sex couples, no matter how long-standing their relationship or ironclad their legal documentation, don't have that right. The same-sex partner of a patient in those hospitals is considered a regular visitor, not a family member, and may not be admitted if only family members are allowed in the patient's room.

Ms. Pond had filed a living will, a binding legal document, that appointed Ms. Langbehn to make medical decisions for her should she become too ill to speak for herself.

But even after copies of that document were faxed to the Florida hospital where Ms. Pond was dying, nurses refused to allow Ms. Langbehn and the couple's three children into the room.

It is difficult to imagine that a heterosexual couple — even an unmarried heterosexual couple with a similarly long-standing relationship — would be treated the same way.

Clearly, doctors and nurses must have the freedom to do their jobs. But if family visitors are permitted, it shouldn't be up to a hospital staffer who never met or spoke with the patient to determine who qualifies as family.

Ms. Pond is not an isolated example. In 2005, Jo Ann Ritchie died alone in a Washington state hospital. Hours before her death, her partner of 17 years, Sharon Reed, was ordered out of the room by a nurse.

Like Ms. Pond, Ms. Ritchie had a living will that designated her partner to make medical decisions for her. But hospital officials wouldn't provide Ms. Reed with any information on her partner's condition. Without that information, she couldn't possibly make informed medical decisions, as Ms. Ritchie had intended.

The executive order that President Obama signed last week will help — but only if federal officials take steps to enforce it.

When Medicare and Medicaid were created in 1965, federal officials had to force many hospitals in the still-segregated South to admit and treat African-American patients. They did it by threatening to withhold federal Medicare money from segregated hospitals.

A similar threat — the loss of federal funding — can help to ensure that hospitals adopt humane anti-discrimination policies that protect the rights of same-sex couples.

Allowing same-sex couples to care for and support each other and, when necessary, to make appropriate medical decisions for each other, isn't only a matter of protecting their civil rights, it also is a matter of simple human rights.