<p>The medical information stuff is HIPAA (<a href="http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/hipaa/%5B/url%5D">http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/hipaa/</a>). The student privacy one is FERPA (<a href="http://www.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/ferpa/index.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/ferpa/index.html</a>). </p>
<p>On HIPAA: You can give instructions to the pharmacy, hospital, and doctors as to whom they can share information with--until you've done that, they can <em>not</em> share information of any kind. I had no trouble getting access to my own labs when I wanted them recently; there are standard forms for that. (Yes, you authorize "self" to examine the files.)</p>
<p>On FERPA: note that it says that educational privacy rights transfer when the child enters post-high school education. Yep, at 16 (when S went to college), we had no rights to see our son's grades, even though we were still legally responsible for him--and the school still wanted us to sign permission slips for PE courses and so on.</p>