PSA: My credit took a 30-point hit from a medical bill I didn't know about

Found a $200 ER visit from 2 years ago on my report last week in Phoenix. Never got a bill because the hospital sent it to an old address. Anyone else deal with medical stuff just showing up?

3 comments

3 Comments

mason.drew2d ago

Wait did you actually check your credit report or did this just pop up as a collection? lol I had something similar happen with a $50 lab bill from like 3 years ago in Tucson. It showed up out of nowhere and dropped my score 25 points. I called the hospital billing department and they actually told me they just send stuff to collections automatically if the address is wrong or whatever. Its honestly so dumb how they dont even try to track you down first. The good news is I got them to delete it from my report after I paid it directly to the hospital. You should call the original hospital and ask about paying it before the collection agency gets more involved. They usually will pull it back and take it off your record if you catch it soon enough.

blair9902d ago

Yeah but here's the thing nobody talks about - sometimes the hospital contracts with a billing company that has a bad reputation for not actually forwarding payments or updating records properly. I dealt with one called Med-Data or something that kept sending stuff to collections even after I paid the hospital in full. Its like the left hand doesnt know what the right hand is doing. So even if you pay the hospital, you gotta double check that the collection agency actually got the memo.

hannahj492d ago

Girl tell me about it. I had a $75 copay from a doctor's visit back in 2018 that somehow ended up in collections because they said they mailed the bill to my old apartment. I didn't even know about it until my credit score dropped like a brick two years later. After I paid the hospital directly, it still took like three months and three phone calls to get the collection agency to actually remove it from my report.