HIPAA-Compliant Fax for Arkansas Healthcare Providers
Clinics, hospitals, and pharmacies across Arkansas send and receive a heavy volume of faxes every day: referrals, lab orders, prescription authorizations, and consent forms moving between providers, labs, and payers. The Arkansas Department of Health and federal HIPAA rules both require that protected health information travel by a secure method, and fax remains the channel most labs and pharmacies will accept on the first try.
Regulations & Compliance
Arkansas providers answer to federal HIPAA on top of state health-information privacy law enforced by the Arkansas Department of Health, with the AR Board of Medical Examiners setting expectations for how clinical records are kept and shared. A compliant fax workflow encrypts the transmission and the stored copy, and covered entities sign a Business Associate Agreement before any PHI moves. Faxing stays acceptable precisely because it leaves a documented delivery record.
Key Institutions
- • Arkansas Department of Health
- • Arkansas Medical Association
- • Arkansas Hospital Association
- • AR Board of Medical Examiners
Healthcare Fax in Arkansas — FAQ
Yes. Transmissions are TLS-encrypted and stored under AES-256 encryption, and a Business Associate Agreement is available for covered entities in Arkansas. That combination satisfies federal HIPAA and the state privacy standards the Arkansas Department of Health enforces.
Referrals, lab orders, prescription and prior-authorization requests, and patient consent forms make up most of the traffic. Labs, pharmacies, and payers across the state still default to fax for these, largely because each send carries its own delivery confirmation.
No. On the Business plan and above, inbound fax PDFs are never attached to email. The provider gets a notification and downloads the document from an authenticated dashboard, which keeps PHI out of inboxes.
Plans start at $12.99 a month, and the HIPAA-eligible Business plan is $79.99 a month. Choosing your fax number is free, and there are no per-page charges — a clinic that exceeds its allowance just moves to a higher tier, so it isn't paying for a line and hardware it barely uses.
Why this matters
The HIPAA Security Rule requires technical safeguards to protect electronic protected health information when it is transmitted over a network.
Source: U.S. HHS — 45 CFR § 164.312(e)(1)HIPAA requires covered entities to obtain satisfactory assurances — typically a Business Associate Agreement — from vendors that handle protected health information on their behalf.
Source: U.S. HHS — 45 CFR § 164.308(b)As of 2021, most U.S. non-federal acute care hospitals still used mail or fax to exchange summary-of-care records with outside organizations — 69% to send and 78% to receive.
Source: ONC Data Brief No. 64 (Jan 2023), AHA Annual Survey IT SupplementStart faxing for healthcare in Arkansas
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