Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act And HIPAA Laws Into Practice
FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act) and HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) differ in terms of the type of details they aim to protect and this can produce some confusion, i.e. with regards to 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 wellness information.
When HIPAA is Applicable to Schools
However, a school does act being a healthcare provider after it provides healthcare services to its students. Here, if the school needs to conduct any transactions during the electronic mode, it functions similar on 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 sort of cases, the school should make certain that it’s compatible in 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 named “treatment records”), they must be compatible with FERPA and not the HIPAA Privacy Rule standards. Thus, this kind of schools are not needed to comply with HIPAA Privacy Rule mainly because they are 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 for the interpretation of FERPA’s “education records”. Here, the psychological treatment along with other medical records of students aren’t covered being a part of “education records”, i.e. if such records are shared for the sole purpose of treating the student, i.e. when disclosing this kind of records is central to providing the right treatment.
Such exceptions to FERPA are also applicable to HIPAA Privacy Rule and the HIPAA Security Rule. This is simply because Security Rule regulations apply to all the subsets of details included during the Privacy Rule (i.e. related to electronic form of PHI).
Boone Gomez administers edocscan.com. For more information on emr software and ferpa regulations , visit http://www.edocsan.com
Processing your request, Please wait....
