Cunningham Law, LLC

10/07/2026

Confession: I never wanted to be a provider. I don't like or understand science, and I really don't like blood. Medicine and I would not have gotten along.

What I did want to do was improve access to care. I found my way to healthcare law in my mid-30s, right as my mom's health was declining from Parkinson's. If you are a physician who has been practicing for years and wonder whether it is too late to go a different direction, I'm here to tell you, it's not. Follow your heart. Our healthcare system needs you.

I have been listening to Essentialism by Greg McKeown lately, and it has me thinking about everyone who wants to open their own practice. To apply what I've learned from the book: find the essentials, including the legal ones, then ask whether everything else on your worry list even needs to be there. You don't need it all figured out on day one. And no, you don't need a podcast, or videos, or anything else that you don't want to do.

Thinking about opening a practice? Message me and let's talk through what matters now, what matters later, and what probably doesn't matter at all (this last list is probably longer than you think).

Call or text: (216) 785-1285
Email: [email protected]

09/30/2026

Opening a direct primary care practice? The state in which you practice matters. A whole lot.

Georgia and other states have an enacted DPC law with clear rules on cancellation, advance payments and refunds. South Carolina has only a proposed bill, so your membership agreement has to carry more weight. And concierge medicine does not automatically fit under Georgia's DPC rules just because patients pay a membership fee. Still other states have no pending or enacted legislation.

Please do not copy a template from another state and hope for the best. Read my posts first:
Georgia: https://kimcunninghamlaw.com/blog/starting-dpc-practice-georgia/
South Carolina: https://kimcunninghamlaw.com/blog/starting-dpc-practice-south-carolina/

Then sign up for my newsletter, which drops every other Tuesday: https://kimcunninghamlaw.cliogrow.com/intake/07645756232939f976be955b27bdb2c9

General information, not legal advice.

If you need legal advice specific to your practice in SC, GA, or OH, get in touch, I'd love to help!

☎️call or text: (216) 785-1285
📧email: [email protected]

09/24/2026

Have you heard seen me mention direct primary care (DPC) repeatedly and wondered what it actually means? Well it's your lucky day! Here's a simple explanation:

In a traditional practice, your doctor bills your insurance for every visit. In direct primary care, you pay your doctor a monthly membership fee instead, and in exchange you typically get more time with them, easier access by phone or message, and a lot less paperwork standing between you and your care. Compared to many health plans now, the membership fee is pretty nominal.

It's not insurance, and it's not meant to replace it. Many people who use DPC still keep a separate insurance plan for things like hospital stays, surgery, or specialists, but you don't need a health plan to sign up with a DPC. Think of DPC as covering the relationship with your primary doctor, and insurance as covering the bigger stuff.

Why are more doctors offering this? Many say it lets them spend real time with patients instead of rushing through visits to keep up with insurance billing demands and other regulations that may or may not apply. It's an emerging avenue for doctors to get back to building relationships with their patients (the kind of relationship most patients want) and health care rather than sick care.

If your doctor offers a DPC or membership option, it's worth asking questions. What's actually included in the fee. What isn't. What to do if you want to end the relationship with your DPC. How you'd get care if you needed a specialist or ended up in the hospital. A good practice will walk you through all of it before you sign anything.

DPC is often confused used interchangeably with the term "concierge medicine" but they're actually different. More on this in a future post!

As you can probably tell by this page, I love this topic, and happy to answer questions you may have as a patient or a doc.

☎️call or text: (216) 785-1285
📧email: [email protected]

09/16/2026

Two reasons to celebrate! Cunningham Law just turned 1️⃣year old 🎊, and I'm celebrating by launching my new website, built around the work I love doing most: helping direct primary care and concierge medicine practices get their legal foundation right.

If you're a physician thinking about going the membership route, or you've already made the leap, there's more to it than just deciding to stop running around in circles with health plans. Your membership agreements, your HIPAA compliance (if needed), how you're structured, all of it needs to actually fit what you're doing and you want to do, within the bounds of the law, of course!

Thank you to everyone who has sent me clients, asked me questions, or cheered me on this year. I'd love for you to check out my new website. Link is in the comments.

09/09/2026

Something happened a few weeks back that I am still laughing about.

I had a meeting set up with someone I really wanted to connect with. The morning of, she tried to reschedule because of a minor inconvenience at our meeting spot.

I proposed a new location and just kind of said, "let's do it". We were already on the calendar, I had blocked the time, I was already in the area, and I didn't want to reschedule.

We had the meeting. It was great. We laughed, we actually almost cried talking about some personal things, and we got to know each other's business. And at the end she hugged me and said, "That was actually really nice."

I laughed. She said, "I'm serious!" I thought, "I know you are".

It felt like she meant, "I didn't want to take the time to get to know you and I didn't think it'd be worth it, but I think it actually was!" Rather than being offended, I choose to take as a compliment that I was able to change her mind in a little more than an hour.

Anyway. Made my week. Anyone else had a moment like that recently?

☎️call or text: (216) 785-1285
📧email: [email protected]

09/04/2026

I have not been following the Lindsay Clancy trial closely, so I want to be careful about commenting on the case itself. But something in the coverage caught my attention as an attorney who works with healthcare providers, and I think it is worth sharing.

One of the psychiatrists involved reportedly had her website state that she used postpartum psychiatry, suggesting that she had clinical experience that didn't have. That website language could be problematic. The defense certainly seemed to have thought so. Qualified, experienced, specialized? No, just "interested" in it.

If you are a healthcare provider in private practice, your website language is not just marketing. It can become evidence. Courts, licensing boards, and plaintiffs' attorneys will look at what you said about your own expertise and hold you to it.

This is exactly why I tell my provider clients to slow down when writing their bios and service pages. Say what is true. Say what you actually do and how you were trained to do it. Do not reach for language that sounds good but overstates your scope.

It matters.

☎️call or text: (216) 785-1285
📧email: [email protected]
🌐visit:

An attorney for your healthcare, trade, or other small business. Advising providers and healthcare businesses on compliance, contracts, and regulatory matters in SC, GA & OH

08/26/2026

Here is something I see over and over. Some clients come to me starting something new, wanting it set up right from the beginning. Others come to me after something already went sideways, a falling out with no agreement to fall back on, a contract nobody read, years of business with no real paperwork behind it.

The second kind of call is always harder and more expensive than the first would have been. Fixing a mess after the fact means figuring out what everyone actually meant versus what they assumed. Setting things up right at the start means you never have to go through that.

Most people who do this right never end up needing a lawyer for a dispute at all, and that is exactly the goal.

If you have been putting off the legal side of something you're building, consider this your sign that proactive legal services bring peace of mind rather than worrying about not even knowing exactly what you're worrying about!

☎️call or text: (216) 785-1285
📧email: [email protected]
🌐visit: https://kimcunninghamlaw.com/

08/24/2026

It's Monday. Somewhere out there a healthcare provider is sitting in their car in the parking lot, dreading the next ten minute visit, wondering if there's a better way to do this.

There is. It's called private practice, and I've helped many providers navigate both the legal and practical sides of doing it.

Starting tomorrow, I'm sending out a newsletter every other Tuesday on what I'm actually seeing in DPC and private practice, contracts, compliance, the real stuff to help you understand how to do what you really want to do.

Sign up for my newsletter at the link in the comments, or send me your email address and I'll sign you up.

kimcunninghamlaw.com

08/18/2026

I was recently asked to write a legal checklist for LexisNexis, one of the biggest names in legal research and publishing, on how doctors and healthcare practices should be documenting patient visits in their electronic health records, and I did it!

If you're a healthcare provider, this covers stuff like: who's allowed to edit patient notes, how corrections should be handled, and some of the everyday habits, like copying forward an old note or leaning on a template, that can quietly cause problems down the road if they're not being used carefully.

I can't share the actual document since it belongs to Lexis, not me, but if you're a provider and want to know whether your practice is set up right, send me a message. This is the kind of thing I help clients get ahead of before it becomes a headache.

If you do have access to Lexis, the link is in the comments.

Proud of this one. Solo practice, big publisher 🔖

☎️call or text: (216) 785-1285
📧email: [email protected]
🌐visit: https://kimcunninghamlaw.com/