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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 chatted, we heard the OB/GYN open the door to the exam room next door and greet the woman who had been in the waiting room with us. Then, we very plainly heard an exchange between them about how the girl had engaged in some hazardous practices and now was worried she had become infected with an STD. My spouse and I looked at each other flabbergasted that we had been privy to a discussion 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 conversations 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 the two rooms. I discovered that the space had been retrofitted to fit the needs of this obstetrician's 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 at the bottom of the sound leak.

Besides it being a glaring breach of HIPAA laws, this type of problem could possibly effect a doctor's relationship with and care that they give to a client. If the person notices that what they tell their doctor is not 100% confidential, they could be more nervous to give out information that could be relative to what care they should be receiving. The trust between a patient and a doctor 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 problem would be to outfit the office with sound masking technology. With the addition of some slight background noise in each room, it would not have been nearly so easy to hear exchanges in other rooms.