Articles

Four years ago my husband and I were waiting in the lobby of my doctor's office. Pregnant with our first child, we were there for a prenatal exam. It was one of the first appointments of the day, so there was only one other woman in the waiting room with us. Not only did she stick out because she was the only other person in there, but because she looked very young and did not look as if she was pregnant. She was summoned back to the exam room right before they called me back.

As my husband and I sat in the exam room and chatted, we heard the obstetrician open the door to the exam room beside us and greet the person who had been in the waiting room with us. Then, we very distinctly heard an exchange between them about how the woman had engaged in some hazardous practices and now was worried she had become infected with an STI. My husband and I looked at each other horrified that we had been privy to information that was positively none of our business. We also did not like the fact that, if we could hear them as distinctly as if they were seated in the room next to us, then they obviously could hear us and our confidential discussions as well.

Before the obstetrician came into the room, I tried to find out the reason the sound was carrying so well between both rooms. I noticed that the room had been retrofitted to fit the needs of this obstetrician's practice and that the wall between both rooms was intersecting with a window. There was a tiny amount of space between the window and the wall and that was at the bottom of the noise leak.

Besides it being a definite breach of HIPAA practices, this type of issue could potentially effect a doctor's relationship with and care that they give to a patient. If the patient notices that what they tell their physician is not automatically confidential, they could be more hesitant to give out details that could be pertinent to what care they should be receiving. The trust between a client and a physician should be fostered and safeguarded and this kind of disregard for the confidentiality of what is shared could be damaging to that.

A straightforward solution for the issue would be to outfit the space with sound masking technology. With the addition of some subtle background noise in each room, it would not have been nearly so easy to hear exchanges in other rooms.