HIPAA stands for the Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act of 1996 and its purpose is to provide health care coverage continuity, ensure greater accountability and simplify administrative functions within the health care industry. The federal government has mandated that all pharmacies and healthcare providers in the United States must have safeguards in place to protect patient health information from intentional or unintentional disclosure. Because physicians and pharmacists discuss medications, symptoms and health conditions with their customers and patients at consultation areas where others might be able to overhear, making changes that will protect the privacy of these conversations is a paramount concern facing all healthcare professionals.

If you are building, retrofitting or managing a healthcare facility where protecting patient health information is a concern, sound masking can be the best solution to meet your HIPAA oral privacy requirements — and the most cost-effective safeguard you can include. In addition, speech privacy is considered by many patients and doctors to be critical to patient satisfaction.

What is the Privacy Law?

It's part of the Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act (HIPPA), which was established to provide healthcare coverage continuity, ensure greater accountability and simplify administrative functions within the healthcare industry. It creates extensive new requirements for privacy standards including transmission of health information in electronic, paper, and oral forms. All types of healthcare organizations are affected by HIPAA regulation.

• Pharmacies
• Physician Offices
• Health Plans
• Hospitals
• Military Medical Bases
• Public Health Authorities
• Clearinghouses
• Billing Agencies
• Information Systems Vendors
• Life Insurers
• Universities
• Employers
• Service Organizations

Since April 14, 2003, pharmacies and all healthcare providers have been required to have appropriate technical and physical safeguards in place to protect oral privacy during transmissions of health information in spoken communications as well as paper and electronic form.

Achieving a "Reasonable" Oral Privacy Solution in Your Space

Bringing your facilities into HIPAA compliance may not require extensive renovations or exorbitant expense. In fact, you may be able to meet privacy standards by applying a two-part solution that is straightforward and time-tested.

Part 1:
Upgrading Ceiling Panels

Traditionally, acoustics have been a secondary factor in design of healthcare settings. During construction and even subsequent renovations, drug stores and other medical facilities are often fitted with general-purpose ceiling panels that may not provide sound reduction and attenuation.

Upgrading with ceiling panels designed to improve the acoustics of such open areas is an effective first step in bringing a facility closer to meeting the new privacy requirements. Ceiling panels featuring higher NRC and CAC properties are available in a variety of styles and materials to meet a full spectrum of design and budget needs.

Part 2:
Sound Masking

To fully meet the HIPAA oral privacy standards, the performance of even the most acoustically effective ceiling panels will likely need enhancement. This can be easily accomplished with sound masking.

Sound masking introduces an obtrusive, ambient background sound into open spaces, and other areas using special low-voltage. UL-listed speakers installed in the plenum above a suspended ceiling where they are not seen.

Sound masking is set on e to three decibels above conversational speech, rendering discussions unintelligible to those outside the immediate area. The random sound produced is non-directional and harmoniously uniform, and the masking level can be adjusted to suit a variety of conditions and privacy requirements.

Meeting
Privacy Standards

The chart below shows how well a listener might be able to overhear conversation at various distances from the people speaking. For example, L1, or Listener 1, is located 10 or more feet from the conversation; L2 is located seven feet from the conversation, etc. The gray bar represents the articulation index (AI) when sound masking is not used. The blue bar shows AI with masking. As you can see, AI is significantly lower with masking. This reduction is particularly dramatic five to seven feet from a conversation, which is the typical distance between pharmacy consultation areas and customers standing in line. AI of .20 or lower meets ASTM industry standards (E-1130) for privacy.

AI of .20 or lower meets ASTM industry standards (E-1130) for privacy.