Medical Debt Credit Reporting

Medical debt credit reporting is the practice of collection agencies reporting unpaid medical bills to the credit bureaus, where they drag down a person's credit score and can block a mortgage or a car loan. The rules around it changed a great deal between 2022 and 2025, and most people are working from old information.

Here is where things stand. In 2022 and 2023 the three national credit bureaus, Equifax, Experian and TransUnion, agreed to stop reporting paid medical collections, to stop reporting any medical collection under $500, and to wait a full year after the debt goes to collections before reporting it at all. That removed roughly 70 percent of medical collection accounts from credit reports. The federal consumer bureau then finalized a rule in early 2025 to remove medical debt from credit reports entirely and bar lenders from using it, though that rule was tied up in court and its status should be checked before relying on it. Separately, several states, including Colorado, New York and Minnesota, have passed their own bans. And the newer credit scoring models, FICO 9 and VantageScore 4, already weigh medical collections far less than other debt.

The takeaway: if a medical collection is on your credit report, check whether it is under $500, paid, or less than a year old; any of those means it should not be there, and you can dispute it with the bureau in writing. And pay attention to the timing: a bill you are disputing with the hospital cannot lawfully be reported while a nonprofit's financial assistance process is open.