Family Educational rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) is a federal law enacted in 1974 focuses on protecting the privacy of students educational records ( Martin Weiss & Michael Solomon 2013, page 40) this is done by preventing the disclosure of Personally Identifiable Information (PII) relating to any student's educational record without the consent of the student o the permission granted by a responsible eligible parent. . It is worthy to note here that FERPA does not apply to private schools and religious schools that do not receive support from the federal government. FERPA also grants students as well as the parents the exclusive right to request corrections of errors or inaccuracies in a student's record. interestingly, FERPA is clear to exclude student's Health Records of students in higher educational institutions. FERPA only comes into play if the records are released to someone outside of the health center. (http://www.nuemd.com/blog/hipaa-and-ferpa-six-golden-rules-of-privacy-law) FERPA does not cover records of teachers, workers or professors of the educational institution.
Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) was enacted by the United States Congress in 1996 to among other things promote and encourage maintenance of health Insurance among citizens.( Martin Weiss & Michael Solomon 2013, page 35 -36) It was also meant to create some efficiency and effectiveness of the American health System. HIPAA was reviewed updated in 2003 to also include electronic health records and automation.
Entities that are impacted by HIPAA are the Health Care providers, Healthcare Clearing Houses, Health Plans, Insurance Companies and any entity that deals with a patient's health Information record.
Both HIPAA and HIPAA however make exceptions for the release of records in cases of emergency if it is to protect the life of the subject (that is either the student or the patient. )
References: 1. Martin Weiss & Michael Solomon (2013) Auditing IT Infrastructures for Compliance. 2. http://www.nuemd.com/blog/hipaa-and-ferpa-six-golden-rules-of-privacy-law