Speech privacy in healthcare facilities

In response to the growing recognition in the U.S. that personal privacy requires more protection, two federal regulations were enacted. These are the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) and the Gramm‐Leach‐Bliley Act of 1999 (GLBA). The first includes provisions for protecting patient healthcare information and the second for protecting personal financial records information. These focus on data privacy and only obliquely refer to speech privacy; however, the enforcement guidelines for HIPAA specifically require acceptable speech privacy consistent with the intention of HIPAA. The definition of speech privacy, how to evaluate it, and what constitutes acceptable speech privacy are not addressed in these Acts nor in enforcement guidelines. To provide much needed guidance on this, ANSI S12 Working Group 44 Speech Privacy was formed in 2006 to develop standards for speech privacy. The efforts of the working group are to be discussed. In networking with the healthcare building design profession, it became evident that the American Institute of Architects (AIA) Hospital Design Manual was in great need of general acoustical, as well as speech privacy guidelines. This presentation will discuss this and the many on‐going efforts in the area of healthcare acoustics.