ANSI/ASA S12.70 has just been released. The title of the document is “American National Standard Criteria for Evaluating Speech Privacy in Healthcare Facilities.” It addresses the important issue of patient privacy. Not only is this a social issue, it is also a regulatory requirement. Both HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996) and HITECH (Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act, 2009) require caregiver-patient confidentiality. Now you have a standard to help you meet this important need.
Before now, most speech privacy standards have focused on work spaces and environments. Healthcare is different, since there are many parts of these types of facilities that are open for patient monitoring and safety. I spent a week in an ICU up in Reno this month watching over my sister, who had 4 major surgeries in 6 days (she’s recovering quite nicely, thank you!). I can tell you that there are a lot of reasons to have an “open” floor plan — to move beds and equipment in and out of the patient spaces quickly is one.
However, I also noticed how very careful the hospital staff was regarding the information about my sister. Phone calls were screened and either she or the family was asked for authorization to give any information at all. Specific data concerning her health was reserved and only the doctors spoke with us about it. None-the-less, good staff protocol will only go so far. Other factors do come into play, some of which have to do with the design of spaces where “confidential” speech will take place. This is to avoid the release of such information to the unintended listener.
The ANSI/ASA S12.70 addresses three components of speech privacy. These are speech level, sound isolation between architectural spaces, and background sound levels at the location of any possible unintended listener. You’ll find two indexes to help you determine speech privacy, the articulation index (AI) and the privacy index (PI).
Where should you use the ANSI/ASA S12.70 in setting your design criteria? You can use it to achieve acceptable speech privacy in treatment rooms, offices, pharmacies, reception and waiting areas, and so on. In addition, there are Annexes in this document that will help you understand how speech privacy can be achieved in differences of architectural spaces and circumstances. Indeed, it will help you objectively evaluate privacy to verify conformance with the criteria provided.
There are any number of standards being used these days in healthcare facilities, notably those developed by AAMI (the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation). The extension of this work into the standardization area provided by ASA (the Acoustical Society of America) is timely and appropriate. Providing those tasked with meeting regulatory requirements with measureable criterial for compliance is essential. We encourage all healthcare organizations and the architectural firms that support them to get and use this new standard.
Order your copy from Document Center Inc., an authorized distributor of ANSI and ASA standards. Search for and order the publications you need at our webstore, www.document-center.com. Here is a direct link to the order page for ANSI/ASA S12.70. It is available both in paper format and for pdf download.
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