Case Study: Urgent Care Facility

A large and comprehensive healthcare provider in Indiana operates 15 hospitals and employs about 38,000 team members. One of their urgent care facilities is a two-story, 23,000 square-foot building with 38 exam rooms, doctor’s offices, imaging areas, and a medical clinic. The facility employees 214 and sees an average of 3,000 patients a week. It was built in 1988 and renovated in September of 2022.

The healthcare provider wanted to ensure clear communication and respect conversation privacy within its building to drive greater patient comprehension, satisfaction, and employee productivity. They aimed to reduce distractions caused by the distant conversations of others. The design of the 36-year-old building made patient privacy difficult, with centrally located nurses’ stations adding to the acoustic challenges. Further, HIPAA requires appropriate safeguards to protect the privacy of protected health information, proving challenging in the current environment. With a limited budget and no money to renovate the structure, the provider began searching for reasonable, affordable alternatives to address the problem. Having used standalone noise machines in the past, the organization’s leaders sought a more comprehensive technology to address speech privacy at the facility.