Informative Articles

It was 2006 and my spouse and I were seated in the waiting room of my obstetrician's office. I was expecting our first baby and just there for a normal check-up. It was an early morning appointment, so there was only one other patient in the waiting room with us. I recall noticing her because she looked young and she wasn't noticeably pregnant (like patients who joined me in the waiting room usually were.) The assistant called her back by name just before they called me back.

As my husband and I sat in the exam room and conversed, we heard the OB/GYN open the door to the exam room next door and greet the girl who had been in the lobby with us. Then, we very clearly heard a discussion 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 flabbergasted that we had been privy to knowledge that was positively none of our business. We also did not like the fact that, if we could overhear them as clearly as if they were sitting in the room with us, then they obviously could hear us and our confidential conversations as well.

Before the doctor came into the room, I attempted to find out why the noise was carrying so well between both rooms. I discovered that the area had been retrofitted to fit the needs of this medical practice and that the wall between both rooms butted up against a window. There was about a half an inch of space between the window and the wall and that was the culprit of the sound leak.

Besides it being a glaring breach of HIPAA laws, this type of predicament could conceivably effect a physician's relationship with and care that they give to a person. If the person discovers that what they tell their physician is not necessarily confidential, they could be more reluctant to give out specifics that could be pertinent to what care they should be receiving. The trust between a client and a physician should be fostered and guarded and this kind of disregard for the confidentiality of what is shared could be damaging to that.

A simple solution for the predicament would be to outfit the place with sound masking technology. With the addition of some barely noticeable background noise in each room, it would not have been nearly so easy to hear conversations in other rooms.