Removing Unpaid Medical Bills from Credit Report Before 7 Years

Reader Question: Can past-due medical bills be removed from you report before 7 years?

A lot of people have been asking about unpaid medical bills lately. Sadly, it's indicative of a common problem in this country. With the rising costs of health care and pitiful state of our insurance companies, a lot of Americans are unable to pay their medical bills.

In a previous Q&A session hyperlinked above, I told a reader that unpaid medical bills can be sent to collection like any other type of bill. They can also be reported to the credit reporting agencies and could subsequently lower your overall credit score as a result (though not as much as unpaid credit card debt would hurt your score).

And this brings us up to your question: Can past-due medical bills be removed from a report before seven years?

The short answer is that, yes, it's possible. But it's also unlikely, unless you have a good reason to dispute the negative item.

For the benefit of all readers, let me explain the seven year thing. The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) is a federal law in the U.S. that sets guidelines on how consumer credit information can be maintained and reported. In other words, it's the law that governs the three reporting agencies -- TransUnion, Experian and Equifax.

According to this law, most negative information can only be maintained on your credit report for up to seven years. A bankruptcy filing can stay on there longer, for a period of up to ten years. But most things, such as unpaid medical bills, have to come off your credit report after seven years (usually from the date the account was reported to the credit bureaus).

So is it possible to have unpaid medical bills or other negative items removed before the seven-year window has lapsed? Yes. In the case of errors, you can dispute the negative item with the reporting agency who produced that particular report. Also, if there's a duplicate entry on your credit report, you can typically dispute that to have it corrected.

But what if the negative information is legitimate and accurate? What if you really do have unpaid medical bills in your past? In this case, it's much harder to have them removed from your credit report before the seven years is up ... unless there are some kind of extenuating circumstances involved. I will leave that topic to the lawyers though.

One way you might have the account removed from your report is by paying what you owe. If you paid all of your unpaid bills and then requested that the credit reporting agency remove the item, they may very well do it. If you contact the hospital or the collection agency who represents them, you might even be able to work out a reduced payment plan. It's fairly common for creditors to accept a settlement that's less than the full amount owed.

Hope that helps. Good luck.

Related article:

• How do overdue medical bills affect my credit score?