Effective Date: March 2026
Your Health is Personal. Your Privacy is Our Absolute Priority.
At the Arkansas Fatty Liver Institute, we know that stepping forward to seek treatment for liver health, weight loss, or metabolic issues takes courage. We also know that your medical history, your weight, and your lab results are deeply personal.
We do not take your trust lightly. We are fully committed to maintaining the highest standards of medical confidentiality and strictly comply with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).
This page explains—in clear, plain English—how we protect your Protected Health Information (PHI) and what your rights are as a patient.
(Please note: This is a website summary. You will receive our full, legally detailed Notice of Privacy Practices document to review and physically or digitally sign during your first official visit to our clinic.)
1. What is Protected Health Information (PHI)?
Protected Health Information (PHI) is any detail in your medical record that can be used to identify you and that relates to your past, present, or future physical health, treatments, or billing. At our institute, this includes:
Your diagnoses (such as MASLD, MASH, or insulin resistance).
Your FibroScan® imaging results, liver enzyme lab work, and body composition data.
Your prescribed medications (like GLP-1 weight loss therapies) and IV vitamin treatment plans.
Private conversations and notes taken by our doctors, nurses, and dietitians.
Your medical billing and health insurance records.
2. How We Keep Your Data Safe
We don’t just lock the filing cabinets; we secure your digital footprint. We have implemented strict physical, digital, and administrative safeguards to ensure your health information remains completely confidential.
Secure Patient Portal: Once you become a registered patient, all medical communication, test results, and treatment updates are moved off standard email and into our fully encrypted, HIPAA-compliant patient portal.
Staff Training: Every single member of our team undergoes rigorous, ongoing HIPAA training. We only access your medical records when it is absolutely necessary to do our jobs and provide you with care.
Encrypted Technology: We use medical-grade, encrypted software for our electronic health records (EHR) and internal communications to ensure your data cannot be intercepted.
3. How We Use and Share Your Information
By federal law, we are required to keep your medical information private. We will never sell your health data to third-party marketers. HIPAA allows us to use or share your health information for three routine purposes (known as Treatment, Payment, and Healthcare Operations) without needing your special permission every single time:
For Treatment: We work as a unified medical team. We may share your liver scan results or blood work with your primary care doctor, a referring gastroenterologist, or the pharmacy filling your prescription so you get seamless, coordinated care.
For Payment: We may share necessary diagnosis codes and treatment details with your health insurance company or Medicare to get your services approved and to process claims.
For Healthcare Operations: We may use internal data to run our clinic efficiently, evaluate our performance, improve our medical weight loss programs, or train our clinical staff.
When Do We Need Your Written Permission? For anything outside of routine treatment, payment, or operations, we will ask for your explicit, written authorization. For example, if you achieve incredible weight loss and liver regeneration and we want to feature your “before and after” story on our website, we will never do so without a signed consent form from you first. You can always say no, and you can revoke your permission at any time.
4. Your Powerful Rights as a Patient
HIPAA isn’t just about what we have to do; it’s about the power you have over your own health information. Under federal law, you have the right to:
Look at and copy your records: You can ask to see or get an electronic or paper copy of your medical records and lab results.
Request corrections: If you believe there is a mistake in your health information (for example, an incorrect starting weight or wrong medication listed), you can ask us to correct it.
Request confidential communications: You can ask us to contact you in a highly specific way to protect your privacy. For example, you can request that we “only call my cell phone, never my workplace,” or ask us to mail documents to a P.O. Box. We will gladly accommodate all reasonable requests.
Limit what we share: You can ask us not to share certain health information for treatment, payment, or operations. (Important Note: If you choose to pay for a specific treatment or medication entirely out-of-pocket, you have the legal right to ask us not to share that specific information with your health insurance company, and we must comply).
Know who has seen your data: You can request a list (an “accounting of disclosures”) of the times we’ve shared your health information outside of routine treatment, payment, or operations.
5. Website Forms vs. Medical Records (A Digital Warning)
We want to remind all visitors to fattyliver.us that the contact forms on our website are designed for general scheduling inquiries only (e.g., “What are your hours?” or “I’d like to book a consultation”).
Standard website forms and regular emails are not fully encrypted for sensitive medical data.
Please do not type highly sensitive medical histories, Social Security numbers, or specific health symptoms into the contact forms on our public website. Save those private details for your secure intake paperwork or your private phone call with our staff.
6. Have a Question, Concern, or Complaint?
If you ever feel that your privacy rights have been violated, or if you simply have questions about how we handle your medical data, we want to hear from you immediately so we can make it right. You will never be penalized, treated differently, or retaliated against for asking questions or filing a complaint.
You can reach out to our designated HIPAA Privacy Officer directly at:
Arkansas Fatty Liver Institute
Attention: HIPAA Privacy Officer
Email: privacy@fattyliver.us
Phone:
Address: