Recent Changes in Medical Collections on Consumer Credit Records

Medical collections on consumer credit reports have been an area of focus for CFPB research in recent years. In addition to studying trends in medical debt as a whole, CFPB reports have documented the burden of medical debt on older Americans, and the incidence of medical collections in rural counties in Appalachia and the Deep South region. There have also been recent industry actions to change how medical collections are reported. On March 18, 2022, the three nationwide credit reporting companies voluntarily announced that they would no longer report certain medical collections. These changes had the potential to benefit some consumers by reducing the number of medical collections tradelines and the dollar amount of medical debt reported on consumer credit records.

In a 2022 report (July 2022 Report), we documented the state of medical collections on consumer credit records through March 2022, prior to the announced changes, and described the consumers who were likely to have medical collections items removed as a result of the changes.

In this report, we update the July 2022 Report with data through June 2023. We find that the share of consumers with medical collections on their credit records fell from around 14 percent to around 5 percent between March 2022 and June 2023, and explore how these changes were distributed across the population of consumers with a credit record.

FULL REPORT

Recent Changes in Medical Collections on Consumer Credit Records

Related resources

CFPB Finds 15 Million Americans Have Medical Bills on Their Credit Reports

Paid and Low Balance Medical Collections on Consumer Credit Records