Hello -

About 3 months ago when applying for a mortgage, I was shocked to find a collection on my wife's credit report. When pulling details from the 3 CRAs, it appears that a medical payment for a hospital ER visit was never paid for and resulted in a drop of her beacon score of 130 points. We always pay all of our bills on time. We have never received any bills for this from the hospital ER or any collection agency. This information was simply reported as a collection without any attempt to contact us. I have a feeling that the ER physician and the collections agency is using the wrong mailing address for us.

Anyway based upon Whychat's page, here are the actions I've taken:

1) Opted out from all creditors
2) Requested hard copies of full credit reports from all 3 agencies (EX, EQ, TU) - when doing so, EQ and TU immediately responded back and deleted the collection from my wife's report. But EX reported back that the debt was "Updated" and "verified as belonging to you".
3) Sent a copy of the letter to healthcare provider to the ER physician. In order to find out who the OC was, I had to call the hospital emergency room. The ER nurse told me that the ER docs do their own billing and told me to send a letter directly to the hospital in care of one of the docs who handles the billing. There is no separate billing company sending out the bills. So I sent a Certified return receipt letter to the attention of the ER doc at the hospital. Its now been 8 weeks and no response.

I'm a little confused as to what I should do now since the OC is not responding. Here are some options that I was thinking about:

1) Send in "Form letter to OC Health care provider" with Insert A and a check for the full amount due ($41), and hope that the check gets cashed.
2) Call the hospital ER and ask to speak to the ER physician who handles the billing
3) Call the collection agency and ask them to verify the debt and address that all the bills were sent to.
4) Try to contact someone in the hospital billing department

I'm reluctant to undertake option #3 above because I know that contacting the collection agency will limit my wife's rights under HIPAA. Can someone please advise what I should do next?

Hello - just wanted to make a correction. Here is the correct sequence of actions that I've taken so far.


1) Opted out from all creditors
2) Requested hard copies of full credit reports from all 3 agencies (EX, EQ, TU) which were paid for, not free
3) Sent copies of the Pre-HIPAA dispute letter to all 3 CRAs using handwritten teal font. All 3 responded, and only EXP came back as verified.
4) Sent a copy of WhyChat's "letter to healthcare provider" to the ER physician.

Hi Whychat:

Many thanks for your reply. I can't thank you enough for all of your help. Let me try to clearly answer your questions:

1) The first letter I sent was to all 3 CRAs. The letter was titled "Pre-HIPAA Medical Dispute Letter" from your website http://whychat.5u.com/hipaadisp.html
2) Two of the three CRA immediately deleted the note of collections, EXP was the only one that came back as "verified". EXP provided the name and account number for the ER doctor (the original creditor).
3) I then sent a letter to the original health care provider (the ER doc). There was no "HIPAA compliance" office since this doctor was in a small group practice and did all his billing on his own. So I just titled the letter directly to the doctor. I sent a shorter version of the same letter with insert "B" disputing that the bill was ever sent to us properly. The letter I used as a template was from your website http://whychat.5u.com/hipltr.html. The entire letter on your website did not seem to apply because there was no HIPAA compliance offer or no billing office that I could have sent anything to. Here is a copy of the exact letter that I sent:

June 15, 2009

XXXX, MD, FACEP
Princeton Emergency Physicians
253 Witherspoon Street
Princeton, NJ 08540

Dear Dr XXX:

I recently came to know about an unpaid medical bill that went to collections while checking my credit report. Details of the charge are shown below:

Princeton Emergency Physicians - partial account number XXXX $41.00
A-1 Collections Service
101 Grovers Mill Road
Lawrenceville, NJ 08648

This is quite surprising for me to hear about this because I always pay my bills on time. Although I do recall visiting the Emergency Room at Princeton Medical Center in June of 2008, I did not receive any bills asking for payment. I also have never been contacted by the collections agency above asking for payment. I am quite surprised that something like this would ever be reported to a collection agency without first asking me to pay.

According to my insurance provider, Aetna, a bill total charging $460.00 was submitted for reimbursement on 6/11/2008. Aetna's agreed pricing for this service was $219.13 leaving a copay remaining of $43.82. A check in the amount of $175.31 (check #08325-053952502) was paid on 9/30/08 by Aetna.

If indeed I do owe payment to Princeton Emergency Physicians, I would be happy to pay. Please send me a statement for the amount that I owe to the address above. In return I would like to ask that upon receipt of payment that this deleterious information be removed from my credit report.


Sincerely,
XXXXX

Please let me know what is the next step in the process. Many thanks in advance for your help!

I do not have any such letter "template" anywhere on my website, nor would I, as it is completely nonsensical.

If you want to follow instructions to get a deletion then don't try to reinvent the wheel.

Your "love letter" to the Dr. is worthless, they obviously have NO relationship with the reporting CA.

Send the reporting CA this;
http://whychat.5u.com/ltrcavalhipaa.html

When you get the green card back, send the ONLY remaining CRA this;
http://whychat.5u.com/ltrcavalhipaa.html#DISPUTE

Dear Why Chat:

Many thanks for your response. I will reply back as you indicate above. Will post back the results.

Thanks again for being such an excellent resource!

Hello,

Per instructions above from Whychat, here is an update:

1) Sent in a copy of "Letter to CA on Medical Account Reporting with Balance Due" to the CA via CMRR
2) As soon as the green card came back, I sent a copy of the "Followup dispute" letter to Experian.

Today I received a letter in the mail from the CA, here is a copy:


Aug 27, 2009

Dear XXXX:

In response to your dispute/request, enclosed please find a copy of such verification pursuant to the Fair Debt collection Practices Act (FDCPA), 15 USC 1692 g(a)4. Verification under the FDCPA only requires the dates of service, amount of debts and the service provider. Please note, the FDCPA does not require us to provide credit applications, contract agreements or any other such documentation, in response to a request for debt verification.

Upon receipt of this letter, please contact our office to discuss payment arrangements.

Signed,
XXXXXX

----------ATTACHED PAGE----------------
Account #XXXXXXX
Name
Address

Dear XXXXX:

The following account was placed with A-1 Collection Service

Princeton Emergency Physicians
C/O PRO BILL
POST OFFICE BOX 8507
PRINCETON NJ 08543

Patient Name Account # Date of Svc current Balance
XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXX 06/11/08 $41.54

---------------------------------------------------

Can anyone advise on what to do next? Should I simply wait until Experian replies back, or should I respond back to the CA?

Wait until Ex. responds, then post the results on this thread.

Hello,

I've received a response back from EXPN today. Here is the text of the contents:


Please let me know what the next steps should be. I appreciate all the great advice I've received on this board. Thanks in advance!

OK, as I said earlier the reporting CA has NO current connection to the OC, otherwise they would have provided the requested ( and required) data from the OC with a copy of the account FROM THE OC.

The fact that Ex ( AKA "The Devil") has been the ONLY CRA to not properly investigate and delete is no surprise. Here is the next step.
http://whychat.5u.com/hipaaftccomp.html

In your complaint you should clearly list the steps you have taken to dispute this UNKNOWN medical account, including a letter of inquiry to the alleged OC , from whom I received no response, a dispute to all 3 CRA's of whom Ex is the ONLY one that did not properly investigate and delete, a letter to the reporting CA requesting proof of their acquisition of this unknown medical account,and a response from them which reiterated their claim without any documentation or copy of any account data from the alleged OC, and a 2nd dispute to Experian requesting proof of reinvestigation and deletion.

MAKE SURE you print out your complaint BEFORE clicking enter.

Use your own words, ( this time you can be creative) in your follow up letter to Ex which will include a COPY of the print out of your filed complaint.

Hi - According to WhyChat's instructions above I sent a letter (CMRR) to Experian on 9/21/09 to their compliance department. Within this response I included a printout of the FTC complaint. I received the response back from Experian today. Here is a summary of the letter 12 page document that I received:



Please help. What do I do next?? It appears that Experian simply verified the information again without going back to the source and put in a notation into my wife's credit report. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Wait a few weeks and recheck your wife's report, sometimes a CRA will send out a letter but will in all actuality delete the account after the Monthly automated update.

You COULD also pay the OC the $41. with the HIPAA letter insert "a".

http://whychat.5u.com/hipltr.html

Hi WhyChat,

Many thanks for your response. I have a question about sending the HIPAA letter (with insert A). Before I send in the letter, I thought it would be good to clarify a few things:

• The OC is a group of emergency physicians. I don't believe they have their own "HIPAA officer" to handle these requests.
• In one of the letters in my pile the CA responded back with the name and address of the OC as being "Princeton Emergency Physicians C/O PRO BILL, PO Box 8507, Princeton NJ 08543".
• My confusion therefore rests with who exactly should the letter be addressed to? Should I address the letter to Princeton Emergency Physicians, PRO BILL or both? My guess is that I should use the exact address that was validated by the CA.
• Finally should I still add "HIPAA Officer" to the first line of the address even if they are only a small group of physicians?

Sorry for being so dense, I want to make sure I do this correctly.