Hi everyone!

I stumbled onto this forum a while ago while researching how to rebuild my credit. There is is a ton of great information here, but it seems like everything I've found so far in regards to medical debt  has just been people PMing information back and forth. I missed the boat on that one, so here's hoping I can get some advice on my situation.

I have pretty bad credit. About four years ago I had a series of medical emergencies, without medical insurance, that esentially destroyed my credit. At the time I was unable to make any payments, and in a fairly bad situation in all aspects of my life, so I defaulted on all of them while focusing on just trying to survive, much less save my credit rating.

Thankfully, I was able to get my life back on track over the years, and am now in the position of trying to rebuild my credit. A brief summary of my situation;

-About 6k total debt

-13 accounts listed, all Collection Department / Agency / Attorney. There are a few singletons, but it seems that each hospital visit has 4 seperate accounts under the same account name. For example, I have 4 accounts opened with the California Buisness BU that are all from one ER visit. 

-I've never had a credit card, auto loan, home loan, anything of that nature. 100% of the accounts are medical related, though it seems it's been sold/transferred to collection agecenies/junk debt buyers.

I was recently approved for a credit card through BofA, which was a complete suprise to me. I assume my long history with them and high checkings balance (I learned my lesson pretty well about emergency savings and cash flow) got my foot in the door for a very basic credit card, with a $500 limit.

My current score is 566. I got it from freecreditreport. I understand this is a FAKO score and not my real FICO score, but I'm not applying for loans or any other lines of credit for a while, so i mainly just wanted to see who the account holders were, how to contact them, and to set my game plan for breaking into the 600s.

Out of the 13 accounts, around 70% is listed in one big 4k account, with the others ranging from 100-400 respectively. I have considered trying to bunch up a lot of the smaller ones and go for pay for deletes, as I'm not really in a position to tackle the 4k one just yet. Around what % is standard when offering for pay for deletes? I've seen anywhere from 10-15% all the way to paying 80% or so.

I also intend to use my new credit card every month for basic living expenses, but am unsure as what to do with the balance. I have read that paying it off every month is the way to go, I have also heard that leaving a small balance is the way to go.

Any insight and advice you guys could provide me with would be greatly appreciated.