Does a school nurse have a right to call my childs doctor without permission

My childs school nurse called my childs doctor and told her specific reasons for absences - my fathers death being one. she asked the dr to rescind a previous blanket excuse note my daughter received due to anemia and severe menstrual bleeding. I feeled she has interferred with my childs medical treatment as the dr wrote another note stating she is being treated for something she is not. its very confusing but I need to know did the nurse voilate FERPA?

Parent Answers to "Does a school nurse have a right to call my childs doctor without permission"

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My guess is that the school nurse is questioning some absences and accommodations that is being provided to your daughter because of a medical condition. The correct protocol that the school nurse should have taken was to obtain your consent to contact your daughter's doctor for verification. There are forms that need to filled out previous to any contact that will state the exact purpose for contacting her physician and the precise information that is needed. This will provide your daughter's doctor with the defined parameters with what information will be disclosed to the nurse.

Although this would be the correct protocol, your daughter's doctor is the one who violated her privacy. It should be very unsettling that any random "nurse" can call her doctor and get any part of her medical history disclosed.

There are laws that deal with a patient's privacy. These laws are called HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996). Unless you have given authorization (possibly written and/or verbal) for your daughter's doctor to provide personal medical information to the school nurse, the doctor has violated your daughter's privacy by revealing personal medical history about your daughter. By your post, this doesn't sound like a life or death emergency situation, either.

What I would be more concerned about is your doctor revealing medical information to outside sources, and then lying on top of that. Check out www.lawguru.com and see if you can pose your question there.

Good luck.

My opinion, for whatever it's worth is that the school nurse should feel comfortable calling your child's doctor in an emergency situation or to clarify instructions she has received from him. Speaking strictly for myself, if this happened to my child, she would already have a new doctor and the falsified note would be in the process of being investigated.
It is NOT OK - for ANY REASON! for a doctor to lie or a nurse to ask him/her to lie!

Why did the Doctor write a note for something she isn't being treated for?? That is disturbing of the doctor.
As for the nurse, she sounds like a busy body. I don't understand why she would talk directly to the doctor. I don't know much about FERPA, but as a healthcare worker I think this is a very grey situation although in my opinion it sounds like she is overstating her duty, I bet she could easily argue a medical "concern" as to why she was in contact with the doctor. There is nothing abnormal about a nurse in direct contact with doctors but as in a highschool setting it still sounds sketchy to me.
I would email one of the many sites concerning FERPA for more clarification.

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