The first time it happened, I just thought it a little odd. I checked my voicemail for my home telephone and an elderly gentleman appeared to be asking about a relative who was in the hospital or under some other full-time medical care. I deleted the message, assuming it was one of those random wrong numbers, and speculated that perhaps because my home phone has one of those "Press 1 for X, 2 for Y" style voice prompts that maybe the caller mistakenly assumed he'd correctly dialed an institution of some sort.

This afternoon it happened again. A nice woman with a Latin American accent left a message asking about an insurance approval for her son's. She left a call-back number.

What if she didn't realize that she'd called the wrong number? What if, whatever her insurance issue, it was important that it be handled in a timely manner? What if it was very, very important? These questions worried me.

I called her back and she answered. I let her know she had dialed the wrong number. Afterward, I felt safe to delete her voicemail message.

This can't be a coincidence. Once could be a random misdial, but two medical-related voice mail messages in the past two weeks when I usually get only voice mail that really does belong to me.

So I did some checking. It turns out that if one transposes two of the digits in my number, they get the phone number for Dixie Regional Medical Center. Well, at least one of DRMC's numbers. That explains it.

Now I'm debating whether it would be a good idea to mention that my home number is definitely not the local hospital's number in my automated greeting. If this happens again, I'll be sorely tempted to do so.

The computer security and personal information protection sides of me are hollering loudly that malicious phishers could obtain telephone numbers close to those of a medical institution and illegally obtain personal medical information and exploit it (perhaps insurance fraud). That would be terrible! (And it would increase costs to all of us. We all pay for insurance fraud through higher premiums.)

So please, when calling anywhere, be very, very careful you are dialing the correct number. And don't leave personal information until you have confirmed that you are correctly connected.