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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 chatted, we heard the obstetrician open the door to the exam room next door and greet the person who had been in the lobby with us. Then, we very distinctly heard a discussion between them about how the girl had engaged in some unsafe practices and now was worried she had acquired an STI. My husband and I looked at each other stunned that we had been privy to a discussion that was surely none of our business. We also did not like the fact that, if we could overhear them as distinctly as if they were sitting in the room beside us, then they obviously could hear us and our confidential discussions as well.

Before the obstetrician came into the room, I endeavored to find out the answer to why the noise was carrying so well between both rooms. I discovered 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 about a centimeter 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 laws, this type of issue could possibly effect a physician's relationship with and care that they give to a person. If the patient notices that what they tell their physician is not necessarily confidential, they could be more nervous to give out details that could be relative to what care they should be receiving. The trust between a client and a physician should be fostered and safeguarded and this kind of disregard for the confidentiality of what is shared could be detrimental to that.

A simple solution for the issue 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.