Four years ago my husband and I were waiting in the lobby of my doctor's office. Pregnant with our first child, we were there for a prenatal exam. It was one of the first appointments of the day, so there was only one other woman in the waiting room with us. Not only did she stick out because she was the only other person in there, but because she looked very young and did not look as if she was pregnant. She was summoned back to the exam room right before they called me back.

As my husband and I sat in the exam room and talked, we heard the obstetrician open the door to the exam room beside us and greet the person who had been in the waiting room with us. Then, we very plainly heard a discussion between them about how the girl had engaged in some unsafe practices and now was worried she had contracted an STD. My husband and I looked at each other stunned that we had been privy to knowledge that was surely 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 with us, then they obviously could hear us and our confidential discussions as well.

Before the midwife came into the room, I attempted to find out the answer to why the noise was carrying so well between both rooms. I found out that the room had been retrofitted to fit the needs of this obstetrician'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 at the bottom of the sound leak.

Besides it being a definite breach of HIPAA practices, this type of problem could possibly effect a doctor's relationship with and care that they give to a patient. If the patient notices that what they tell their doctor is not automatically 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 person and a doctor should be fostered and protected and this kind of disregard for the confidentiality of what is shared could be detrimental to that.

A simple solution for the problem 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.

A straightforward solution for the issue of audible breaches of confidentiality would be to outfit the space with sound masking technology. With the addition of some subtle background or "white" noise in each room, it would not have been nearly so easy to hear exchanges in other rooms.