Hi all, let me start with the dopey question.

In whychat's HIPAA letters, the letter is addressed to "Legal Department". The office that I'm sending the letter to is a husband/wife doctor's office. Is "Legal Department" overboard, or should I leave it the same or address it as "legal council" or something to that effect?

Secondly, before I found out about the HIPAA program, I DV'd the two CA's I want to use it on.

One actually did validate while the other did not respond at all. Should I still take my chances with the OC and hope for the best?

If you have opted out and sent the medical dispute letter to the CRA's and received a complete verified response indicating that the OC has in fact provided ongoing data to the CA for the verification, then yes address it to the legal Dept.

If you have missed the first 2 steps, then stop, go back, and do it right.

The smaller the medical office, the more important it is to address the HIPAA letter to the "legal dept.".Even a small practice has a lawyer on retainer, even a small practice is required to be HIPAA compliant. Unless you want your letter to be routed to a billing service in New Delhi, send it to the "legal dept.".

Hi Whychat, thanks for the quick reply.

I actually went to your website, and didn't know that there were more steps. I have opted out, and disputed the debts via the regular online dispute.

I will take your advice and send out the medical dispute form as a separate dispute and then follow up with the HIPAA dispute.

One quick question...one CA is on only one credit report, but the second CA is on all 3 credit reports. For the one credit report that both are on, do I send one letter? Two letters? Separate envelopes?

Thanks for the quick response and guidance.

Hey Whychat, I know you're busy and I appreciate you taking the time to answer these questions.

1.) Does the CRA ever respond or is it a simple "verified" or deleted if the CA doesn't respond?

2.) By requesting the information, how can I go back and use HIPAA and say that I don't want the CA to know my info? Don't the need to request it, because I requested it from the CRA?

I guess I'm not fully understanding the process. I get the jist of it...just not the nuts and bolts.

If the CRA can not obtain the full verification from the CA they are required to delete.
In some cases, they refuse to properly investigate and you need to take further steps, ( complaint to FTC etc.)
The CRA will send you an IMMEDIATE response which is a FORM letter and NOT the real response to your dispute.

The key to using the HIPAA process is to make sure that the OC does not have the legal authority under HIPAA to transmit information to the CA, if YOU provide the information to the CA, such as "proof" that the account was paid, they can ( and will) show it as a "paid" collection, which is almost as bad for your credit as an unpaid one.

Just posting a follow-up to this.

Equifax rec'd my dispute 2/14, on 2/18 I rec'd the standard dispute response with a copy of my CR.

Actually one was deleted and the other was "verified". Should I have expected a different respone? Should I follow up with them before I proceed with the HIPAA letter to the OC?