When Chris MacLellan rushed his partner Richard Schiffer to a Deerfield Beach hospital's emergency room in September 2013, he expected his presence to be acknowledged.

He expected his role as not only partner but caregiver for Schiffer, who had been disagnosed with esophageal cancer in 2011, to be acknowledged.

"I immediately ran into problems at the hospital," said MacLellan, now a caregiving consultant and author who will speak on the topic Thursday in Jacksonville. "I was pretty much ignored."

Years before, he and Schiffer had drawn up living wills, health care surrogate forms and powers of attorney for each other. Schiffer's regular doctors were familiar and accepting of their status.

Still, that day in the emergency room MacLellan was reminded that for many people even medical professionals, health care rights were connected to marriage rights. Two men arriving were not given the same respect as a couple as a man and woman likely would have been given. Even if MacLellan and Schiffer had been married, same-sex marriage was not then legally recognized in Florida.

"Caregivers are the backbone of the health care system," he said. "Caregivers know more about the health and well-being [of a patient] than a nurse could ever know. To not access that information is criminal. … There are no gender boundaries when it comes to caregiving. You're just caring for the one you love."

Some "systems" - from the health care and legal systems to other people's belief systems - "get in the way," he said.

'Be prepared to take care of each other'

MacLellan, now 60, will be keynote speaker at "The LGBT Lens: Challenges and Issues in LGBT Caregiving," a seminar hosted by ElderSource Institute in Jacksonville at the University of North Florida.

He will talk about his experiences in Schiffer's final months, which were captured in a Pulitzer Prize-nominated SunSentinel documentary (interactive.sun-sentinel.com/lgbt-dying-couple), as well as caregiving in general and for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community in particular.

Also, a local panel will discuss LGBT caregiving, provide information and resources and bring attention to the "unique challenges for caregiving within the LGBT community," according to the institute.

One of the panelists will be Evin Willman of Jacksonville Beach, whose September 2001 medical crisis showed how the legal and health care systems should work for LGBT couples.

She was in Nevada for gastric bypass surgery and developed life-threatening complications within 24 hours. She was in intensive care for four weeks as doctors tried to find out the cause, wich turned out to be a nick in her intestine.

"I had been poisoning myself all that time. They fixed that hole, reversed the bypass and sewed me back up," Willman said. "I had become completely debilitated - couldn't walk, could barely raise my arms or even chew."

She later spent two weeks in a rehabilitation hospital and, once she was able to return home, three more months of outpatient physical therapy. Willman and partner Paula Rosenblatt were not legally married at the time - they wed in 2015 - but had set up wills, living wills, powers of attorney and named each other health care surrogates. Those legal documents were recognized by the health care providers handling her care in Nevada.

"Thank goodness," said Willman, now 66. "Paula had to make many decisions on my behalf during this ordeal. Because we had all of these documents properly prepared and executed, there was never a problem with her doing so.

"Our story could have been very different … without those documents giving her the permissions she needed to look out for me," she said.

Without those documents, Rosenblatt might not have been permitted to even see Willman in intensive care becuase she would have had "no legal standing" to do so, Willman said.

"Even though things have improved in many areas, unless you are legally married or designated to make decisions for each other, you could run into problems," she said. "You think you have time to take care of this and you'll get around to it. But something unforeseen could happen tomorrow. It should be a priority to be prepared to take care of each other."

Recognizing the barriers

MacLellan is working to make sure such legal planning is universally recognized.

"Everyone is responsible for their own opinions. We're all the product of our own background and experience, looking through a different set of lenses," he said. "I'm not asking to change anyone's opinion but add to their experience."

The ElderSource Institute is offering a new lens.

Founded in 2015, the institute is a sister company of ElderSource, the nonprofit that serves Northeast Florida seniors. The institute provides caregiver training, professional training, education and resources for adults age 50 and older, their caregivers and service providers.

One of those programs is LGBT elder cultural competency training, which helps people who work with seniors better understand key concepts, vocabulary and barriers they face in the LGBT community.

They must recognize that their patients and clients will include members of the LGBT community. So they must leave their personal and political beliefs at the door, said Heidi Katz, the institute's director of business innovation and development.

"You have to represent the community you live in," she said. "We need to create a welcoming environment so they will seek it out. We're going into their homes."

Spreading the word about the needs of caregivers and their patients, particularly those in the LGBT community, is part of Schiffer's legacy, MacLellan said.

"Richard was a visionary," he said of his partner, who died in 2014 at age 83. "He lived through times when you could be arrested for being gay, yet he had the courage to have his end-of-life story told because he knew the impact the story would have on others. … Richard knew our story, in the end, would make a difference."

Beth Reese Cravey: (904) 359-4109