FERPA Regulations And HIPAA Laws Impact

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by: BooneGomez
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Date: Sun, 13 Feb 2011 Time: 11:00 PM
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FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act) and HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) differ in terms in the sort of data they aim to protect and this can create some confusion, i.e. regarding the software program of HIPAA Privacy Rule regulations for educational bodies that adhere to FERPA standards. Even though HIPAA aims to protect a patient's information, FERPA is limited to protecting only a student's well being information.

When HIPAA is Applicable to Schools
However, a school does act as being a healthcare provider once it provides healthcare services to its students. Here, if the school requirements to conduct any transactions in the electronic mode, it functions similar to 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 such cases, the school need to make certain that it is compatible with 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 just isn't Applicable to Schools
Understandably, this can be not applicable to all schools. For instance, if the records maintained by the school are simply "education records" (also called "treatment records"), they should be compatible with FERPA and not the HIPAA Privacy Rule standards. Thus, these kinds of schools are not required to comply with HIPAA Privacy Rule since they're maintaining "education records" (as defined by FERPA) and not PHI or Protected Health Facts (as defined by HIPAA).

Some Exceptions
Among post-secondary institutions, a slight variation comes towards the interpretation of FERPA's "education records". Here, the psychological treatment and other medical records of students are not covered being a part of "education records", i.e. if such records are shared for your sole functionality of treating the student, i.e. after disclosing this kind of records is central to providing the proper treatment.

Such exceptions to FERPA are also applicable to HIPAA Privacy Rule as well as the HIPAA Security Rule. This really is mainly because Security Rule regulations apply to all the subsets of facts included in the Privacy Rule (i.e. related to electronic form of PHI).

About the Author

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