FERPA Regulations And HIPAA Laws Impact

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by: BooneGomez
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Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2011 Time: 9:45 AM
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FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act) and HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) differ in terms from the type of details they aim to protect and this can produce some confusion, i.e. concerning the software package of HIPAA Privacy Rule regulations for educational bodies that adhere to FERPA standards. Though HIPAA aims to protect a patient's information, FERPA is limited to protecting only a student's health information.

When HIPAA is Applicable to Schools
However, a school does act like a healthcare provider as soon as it provides healthcare services to its students. Here, if the school requirements to conduct any transactions inside the electronic mode, it functions similar towards the activities performed by the covered entities as described in HIPAA's Privacy Rule standards. Hence, the school is then covered under HIPAA regulations. In this kind of cases, the school should make sure that it is compatible on the HIPAA Administrative Simplification Rules for Transactions and Code Sets and Identifiers. These HIPAA standards are aimed at maintaining the integrity of healthcare-related transactions.

When HIPAA is not Applicable to Schools
Understandably, this is not applicable to all schools. For instance, if the records maintained by the school are merely "education records" (also known as "treatment records"), they must be compatible with FERPA and not the HIPAA Privacy Rule standards. Thus, such schools aren't needed to comply with HIPAA Privacy Rule due to the fact they're maintaining "education records" (as defined by FERPA) and not PHI or Protected Wellness Info (as defined by HIPAA).

Some Exceptions
Among post-secondary institutions, a slight variation comes on the interpretation of FERPA's "education records". Here, the psychological treatment as well as other medical records of students are not covered as being a component of "education records", i.e. if this kind of records are shared for the sole function of treating the student, i.e. once disclosing this sort of records is central to providing the appropriate treatment.

Such exceptions to FERPA are also applicable to HIPAA Privacy Rule and the HIPAA Security Rule. That is because Security Rule regulations apply to all of the subsets of information included inside the Privacy Rule (i.e. related to electronic type of PHI).

About the Author

Boone Gomez administers edocscan.com. For more information on emr software and ferpa regulations , visit http://www.edocsan.com