(Reuters Health) – The privacy protections Americans have come to expect when it comes to their medical information may not always apply in school settings, a new report suggests.
When a school nurse is involved in a student’s medical care, information on that care may end up in the child’s educational record – which is accessible without consent to school officials and parents, according to the report in Pediatrics.
The problem is that student healthcare provided by a school nurse can fall outside the privacy guarantees of the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and instead be covered by another federal law, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA).
FERPA states, for example, that information in the student’s file may be disclosed without consent to “school officials, including teachers, within the agency or institution whom the agency or institution has determined to have legitimate educational interests.”
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This is an excerpt from a previously published article.