It was 2006 and my husband and I were sitting in the waiting room of my OB/GYN's office. I was pregnant with our first child and just there for a routine visit. It was an early morning appointment, so there was only one other person in the waiting room with us. I remember noticing her because she looked young and she wasn't noticeably pregnant (like people who joined me in the waiting room usually were.) The nurse called her back by name very shortly 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 woman who had been in the lobby with us. Then, we very plainly heard an exchange between them about how the patient had engaged in some unsafe practices and now was worried she had contracted an STI. My husband and I looked at each other stunned 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 hear them as plainly as if they were seated in the room with us, then they obviously could hear us and our confidential discussions as well.

Before the doctor came into the room, I endeavored to find out the answer to why the noise was carrying so well between both rooms. I noticed that the space had been retrofitted to fit the needs of this midwife's practice and that the wall between both rooms came right up next to a window. There was a tiny amount of space between the window and the wall and that was the culprit of the noise leak.

Besides it being an obvious breach of HIPAA standards, this type of problem could conceivably effect a physician's relationship with and care that they give to a person. If the patient observes that what they tell their physician is not 100% confidential, they could be more hesitant to give out details that could be germane to what care they should be receiving. The trust between a person and a physician should be fostered and guarded and this kind of disregard for the confidentiality of what is shared could be harmful to that.

An easy solution for the problem 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 conversations in other rooms.