Hi,
I'm going to do WhyChat's process of taking care of medical collections.
A little background in case anyone needs the info: Medical bills less than 3 years old (the procedure of which caused all this mess -due to lost wages, having to find a new job- ugh!!
The husband had to have what was supposed to be a routine OFFICE procedure that went worst case scenerio).
We are in an awesome situation now, except for our CRs. We are not dodging any debts, but we do not talk to CAs at all. We want to buy a new house (want to start the building process in the next 3 months) & need 620+ scores for our chosen mortgage brokers to be able to help us.
All medical stuff is sitting w/ CAs right now. I'm curious at what point do I send letters to them (the CAs) (after doing dispute w/ CRAs & sending HIPAA letter w/ PIF w/ restrictive signature to OCs)?
And because I"m curious, the mortgage broker said she didn't think the med bills were effecting much (although they are a couple thousand dollars TOTAL among all of them) & that lenders tend to not pay as much attention to them.... is this true? How much would getting them removed help our credit scores (I know you can't give me an exact figure, I'm just looking for estimates)?
Please, please, please don't hesitate to ask me anything that may help you to help me further! I tried to give as much info as I could think of (off the top of my head)
Thank you sincerely for any/all help/insight you provide,
-JC
CURRENT SCORES AS OF 6/26/2009:
Mine: TU - 585, EQ - 591, EX - 602
Husband: TU - 561, EQ - 594, EX - 583
Goal: short term: 620+, long term: 700 club
I realize they don't (or *may* not) consider those collections when actually physically looking @ the report, but it has to factor into the overall credit score for sure...
IDK, I just know I'm overwhelmed, but motivated to get these taken care of! 
We are both using Score Watch through MyFICO. My husband is also on True Credit right now, but just the 30 day free trial, so we will quit using that shortly. I haven't looked into all the details of True Credit, so maybe it does the same thing as Score Watch, but I have my cell number linked to our Score Watch accounts so that it will send me a text if there are any changes, and it also notifies me when one of our scores reaches a certain number (right now it's set to notify us if we get to 580...that day can't come soon enough!). It's kind of nice, because I don't have to worry about whether or not I should buy scores; it will just tell me when they get higher. I also googled 'MyFICO discount code' and got a code for 20% off, so we're only paying about $7 each per month for it.
Also, I don't know how new you are to this particular site, but they used to have an awesome medical debt board here. They discontinued the board, but you can still read all the posts. I find myself going back to that every once in a while, just to read through other people's stories/situations. They used to have the HIPAA process there, but that is gone now. I studied and studied it, and then when I was finally ready to start my letters, it was gone! 
I am also using WhyChat as my guideline, but I feel like it's a little more confusing than the instructions that were here.
I just put a stamp on my PFD letter. Hopefully they'll agree to take it off. Fingers crossed! Good luck with your pre-HIPAAs!