EXTREMELY IMPORTANT INFORMATION 
ABOUT THE RULES FOR HIPAA AND FERPA 
COVERING AN EDUCATION RECORD

An Alert by Ani­ta Hoge

EDUCATION RECORDS ARE NOT COVERED BY HIPAA.
NO MENTAL HEALTH INTERVENTIONS AT SCHOOL ARE COVERED BY HIPAA.

Expla­na­tion of HIPPA and FER­PA-Ear­ly Child­hood Data can be found in this doc­u­ment: A Look at Penn­syl­va­ni­a’s Ear­ly Child­hood Data System

http://ncsl.org/portals/1/documents/Educ/PAEarlyChild-Stedron.pdfReplac­ing Mom and Dad is the above depict­ed gov­ern­ment bureaucracy
http://ncsl.org/portals/1/documents/Educ/PAEarlyChild-Stedron.pdf

NOTE: Before pro­ceed­ing, the com­mon ordi­nary Amer­i­can par­ent and cit­i­zen must first untan­gle the com­pli­cat­ed gov­ern­ment bureau­crat­ic acronyms. On page 2 of this doc­u­ment we learn the following:

• OCDEL — Office of Child Devel­op­ment and Ear­ly Learning
• PELICAN — Pennsylvania’s Enter­prise to Link Infor­ma­tion for Chil­dren Across Networks
• ELN — Ear­ly Learn­ing Network

The fol­low­ing quote comes from pages 5–6 of the above document.

PRIVACY

The Health Insur­ance Porta­bil­i­ty and Account­abil­i­ty Act (HIPAA) and Fam­i­ly Edu­ca­tion­al Rights and Pri­va­cy Act (FERPA) are the pri­ma­ry fed­er­al statutes that relate to ear­ly child­hood data. Because estab­lish­ment of OCDEL com­bined staff from two agen­cies, the depart­ments of Pub­lic Wel­fare and Edu­ca­tion, many issues of pri­va­cy and data shar­ing relat­ed to these fed­er­al laws were addressed when OCDEL was formed.

FERPA applies to infor­ma­tion in pro­grams sup­port­ed by fed­er­al fund­ing from the U.S. Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion. In gen­er­al, the pro­grams pre­vi­ous­ly admin­is­tered by the Depart­ment of Education—such as Ear­ly Inter­ven­tion pro­grams for chil­dren ages 3 to5 and Head Start—are cov­ered by FERPA. The Depart­ment of Pub­lic Wel­fare is a cov­ered enti­ty under HIPAA. There­fore, pro­tect­ed health infor­ma­tion for recip­i­ents of ser­vices in those pro­grams pre­vi­ous­ly admin­is­tered by the Depart­ment of Pub­lic Welfare—such as sub­si­dized child care and infor­ma­tion relat­ing to the Med­ic­aid pro­gram— are cov­ered by HIPAA, in addi­tion to spe­cif­ic con­fi­den­tial­i­ty require­ments of the par­tic­u­lar pro­grams. The Ear­ly Inter­ven­tion pro­gram for chil­dren from birth to age 3, which had been admin­is­tered by the Depart­ment of Pub­lic Wel­fare, is an excep­tion. All Ear­ly Inter­ven­tion pro­grams, which are sup­port­ed by fed­er­al funds through the U.S. Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion, are cov­ered by FERPA.

HIPAA con­tains an express pro­vi­sion that, if infor­ma­tion is cov­ered by FERPA, it is not cov­ered by HIPAA. In Penn­syl­va­nia, this means infor­ma­tion about a child con­cern­ing a pro­gram admin­is­tered by the state Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion and/or fund­ed by the U.S. Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion is cov­ered by FERPA. AreSchool dis­tricts will not receive infor­ma­tion about a child’s pri­or involve­ment in ear­ly child­hood pro­grams cov­ered by HIPAA. Instead, when a child enters kinder­garten with a unique PA Secure ID already assigned by the Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion, the elec­tron­ic record will indi­cate only that the child is already known to OCDEL. The ELN data sys­tem also col­lects Social Secu­ri­ty num­bers for chil­dren on a vol­un­tary basis pur­suant to the fed­er­al Pri­va­cy Act (5 U.S.C. §552a).

(http://ncsl.org/portals/1/documents/Educ/PAEarlyChild-Stedron.pdf)