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 spouse and I sat in the exam room and conversed, we heard the OB/GYN open the door to the exam room right next to us and greet the woman who had been in the lobby with us. Then, we very plainly heard a conversation between them about how the woman had engaged in some unhealthy practices and now was worried she had acquired an STD. My spouse and I looked at each other horrified that we had been privy to knowledge that was definitely none of our business. We also did not like the fact that, if we could hear them as plainly as if they were sitting in the room beside us, then they obviously could hear us and our confidential conversations as well.

Before the midwife came into the room, I endeavored to find out the answer to why the noise was carrying so well between the two rooms. I noticed that the area had been retrofitted to fit the needs of this medical practice and that the wall between the two rooms was intersecting with 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 an obvious breach of HIPAA standards, this type of predicament could conceivably effect a doctor's relationship with and care that they give to a patient. If the patient observes that what they tell their physician is not automatically confidential, they could be more hesitant to give out details that could be relative to what care they should be receiving. The trust between a person 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.

An easy solution for the predicament would be to outfit the office 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.