Hi everyone, I'm new to this board-I came across it while doing reasearch trying to figure out how to get rid of a medical collection that appeared on my mother's credit report.
So here's the short version of my mom's situation. Over 2 years ago my mom went to this hospital's ER but left to another hospital because they were taking way too long and she couldn't take the pain (mind you the waiting area was desolate so I don't know why they were so rude and inattentive). She informed the lady at the front (who had signed her in) that she would no longer be needing service because she was leaving. Despite not having rendered any services they billed her the $50 co-payment which she of course refused to pay (she already had to pay a co-pay to the other hospital that actually attended to her) and without notification they have apparently reported it to a collection agency who in turn reported it to the credit agencies.
We only found out upon pulling her free annual report on Monday so I immediately disputed the claim for her and explained that services were never rendered so the bill was issued in error. Transunion replied yesterday morning that they had completed their investigation of the dispute and deleted the collection from her report, they even provided an updated copy of her credit report without the collection account appearing anymore. After receiving this response I was hopeful but then we heard back from Experian who cliams to have verified the account (in less than 24 hrs?) and refused to delete it from their file. We have yet to hear back from Equifax at this point.
My question is would this situation be eligible for the Hippa process? From reading the forums I learned that if it is eligible I will have to wait 6 months before asking Experian to re-investigate although I'm not sure why this would be the case since they didn't provide me with any evidence/proof of their investigation (I doubt they heard back from the collection agency so quickly). Also, I have read elsewhere on the web that I can request that the collection agency provide proof of the validity of the debt and if they fail to then I can get it stricken from the credit agency's file-is this a different process from the Hippa process or just a different way of saying the same thing? I ask because in those sites there was no mention of Hippa at all they only referred to debt validation so I wanted to confirm.
And finally I'm wondering what would happen if my mom were to pay it in full-would the entry be stricken off her credit file completely or would it show up as a collection that was paid 2 years late and therefore continue to haunt her as if it hadn't been paid at all? If it will come off completely she might just pay it to get this over and done with.
Thanks in advance for your help.
Message Edited by lennygaudy on 03-19-2009 11:42 AM
