Pull your credit regularly.<p>Credit score is a huge scam too. Coming out of college I was in the bottom 5th percentile in the nation from random medical debts and such, and within a year I was in the 95th percentile. I spent a lot of time researching and negotiating on the phone to make that happen, but I paid nearly nothing.<p>There are so many tricks that can be used to improve the score that are completely counter intuitive. For instance, you would think it would be a good thing for your credit to pay a delinquent bill? Almost never. It&#x27;s acknowledgement that you owed the debt to begin with, so it hurts you.<p>In the case of your doctor&#x27;s office, the best thing to do is NOT pay the debt collector, and then go a different route through the doctor&#x27;s office instead. Generally you can scare them with a potential HIPAA violation into getting the item removed from your report.<p>Edit: I should clarify, pulling your credit will only help for things that are outstanding and have already been reported as delinquent. The important thing to know is that if you catch it on there, you can negotiate anything. Even if you have to call back many times until you get the &#x27;right&#x27; person, you can social hack the process.