The HIPAA Act included provisions for privacy regarding personal, identifiable medical information. But docs and clinics have long been careful about privacy, e.g., not leaving a message on the answering machine regarding anything that could convey medical info about someone to someone else (“Mrs. Smith, we just wanted to let you know that your syphillis test has come back positive …”).
Of course, there are times when that would be handy for all people. Such as around Christmas, when vendors calling and leaving messages on the phone that, oh, certain objects have arrived in a certain store store and can be picked up any time, could possibly blow certain surprises that certain people had in mind.
I’m just sayin’ … 🙂
(Actually, it occurs to me that this wouldn’t be a bad place to use cell phone numbers for communication of this sort.)