to come get his paperwork I would put it in a folder and place it in a safe place that no one would
have access too.
There are many ways to protect a patient’s confidentiality in the reception/waiting room.
Calling out a patients name in the waiting room is against a patient’s HIPAA rights because it can
give out health information, particularly in a high specialized facility. Say a patient is in a
fertility clinic and the nurse calls out the patients first and last name, it can say a lot about what is
going on with the patient. It could also go for in a small town and the nurse comes out calling the
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patient’s name, someone there might know that patient and then question them about it once they
are out of the office or say it to someone else “Hey so in so was in the doctor’s office today and
wasn’t looking so good.”
How many doctors’ offices have fixed this problem is: using a sign- in
sheet, calling the patients by first name only and if there are more than one with the same first
name only calling out the first initial of the last name with the first name, assigning each patient
a number and lastly distributing pagers to let the patient know when the doctor is ready to see
them.
(Use discretion in the waiting room, n.d.)
Another way a doctor’s office can protect a patient’s confidentiality while in the waiting
room is having personal patient information protected from public view or earshot of other’s who
do not need to know the information. (Protecting Patient Privacy in Health Care Settings-
Screenflex, 2014.) Ways that doctor’s offices do this is having the computer screens not facing
