Okay, so I've completely paid a CA for 2 old hospital bills. Now that there is no longer an open medical billing account whatsoever with either the CA or the original hospital, can I tell the CA to get their 2 tradelines the heck off my CR, based on HIPAA? Man, if I could get those off the CR, it would be clean as a whistle!
HIPAA might prohibit them posting information that might disclose the nature of medical treatment, such as "XYZ Fertility Clinic", or "ABC Cancer Center" instead of "medical account". If they are reporting them accurately as paid collections, technically they can leave them. Is there some aspect of the original billing that was erroneous, such as failure of the hospital to correctly file an insurance claim, leading to account sent to collections? Or misapplication of account payments to the wrong physician's account, etc? I have found that when there is an element of hospital billing error, the hospital has been willing to direct the CA to remove, if they hadn't already pulled the account back and taken payment directly themselves. Medical billing and insurance claim errors are fairly common. Hospitals tend to work with CAs who handle collections for them on an ongoing basis, and so dealing with errors is part of the CAs job, just as it is part of the hospital's job. Hospitals have an interest in repeat business from their customers, but it is easier to correct errors and remove negative information when you act quickly.
