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 talked, we heard the midwife 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 conversation between them about how the woman had engaged in some unhealthy practices and now was worried she had contracted an STD. My spouse and I looked at each other flabbergasted 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 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 endeavored to find out the reason the noise was carrying so well between both rooms. I discovered 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 about a half an inch of space between the window and the wall and that was at the bottom of the sound leak.

Besides it being a definite breach of HIPAA standards, this type of predicament 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 doctor is not necessarily confidential, they could be more nervous to give out information that could be germane to what care they should be receiving. The trust between a client and a doctor 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 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 discussions in other rooms.