Popping in as an ex-debt collector for a hospital for an agency with full in-house services including lawyers.
We would get a judgment on large debts, find where you work (hey hey, us Kiwi's have skills lol), and garnish your wages. Find your assets and put liens on them. After death, we would file with the estate as a creditor to get a piece of anything the deceased had to distribute.
But, we also assisted in getting people signed up for programs that, even if you weren't covered at the time of the accident or whatever, would do a look-back and cover the incident (like for minors wrecking motorcycles or what have you). It was a while ago, but I do remember the Fair Credit Reporting Act guidelines still.
They will drop off in seven years from your CR; whatever you do, don't pay a dime on it because that resets the clock and don't let them roll old debt into new thereby making that old debt active again. Put the invoice number on your remittance to avoid the agent spreading your payment to other accounts. And yeah you can do payments of like $10 per month if you really want to pay it but nowadays medical debt really doesn't ding your CR too much. I have an outstanding bill of about 6K from a 2-night stay that will drop off in a couple of years that I never acknowledged and I have excellent credit.