Torin Cunningham, MD

Dr. Cunningham was recommended to us by my daughter’s physical therapist at CHLA. She told me not to be turned off by reviews, because they’re aimed at the office staff, which he has no control over because they are employed by the hospital. The staff isn’t the best, but Dr. Cunningham is great! I feel my daughter is receiving excellent care. I don’t feel rushed during our visit and he answers any questions I may have. We are always well informed, and he never leaves us in the dark. I highly recommend Dr. Cunningham.

Dr Cunningham is amazing! He saved my daughters life. I will agree with other reviews about the problems with appointments, but I will add that he is really good at what he does. Because he is that good, people get referred to him all the time. He is also the go to doctors for disabled clinics and medical therapy units, therefore the staff are very busy and he is booked out for months in advance.
Cons: could be difficult to get an appointment in an emergency, but other doctors could help from the same unit.
Pros:
1.parking is not bad. There is a parking structure to park in and the handicap spots are normally pretty open right in front of the building.
2. He cares! He really cares for the lives of his patients. He monitored my daughter very closely. He arranged all the doctors together to check her health and took routine X-​rays to monitor her status in X-​rays that he had in the office.
3. He makes the extra effort! In addition to seeing his patients in the office, he somehow finds the time to visit his patients post surgery in the hospital every day. I cannot recall if he was there in the weekends too, but in the 11 days my daughter was in the hospital I believe we saw him almost everyday, if not everyday.
4. His nurse case manager is amazing.
In all of these things my daughter is alive due to his operation talents on her spinal fusion surgery. Most important part is being alive against odds, I feel this doctor is amazing.

After reading the reviews. I’m seeing a pattern. It took my wife forever to have someone call us back to make appt. After all of that they say my insurance is an extended provider network. I have great insurance, Blue Cross Blue shield PPO. Now I’m In search of a caring pediatric orthopedic practice.

This has nothing to do with the Dr. Just the Staff. My first experience was with one of my twin daughters and a broken arm in May. Staff was rude, Insurance was the biggest issue. We have excellent insurance and would pay out of pocket if necessary for our daughter. They took all the info and never even returned my call. Thanks for caring about my kid over money!
This time it was for my other twin and a broken arm. I tried the torrance office. First thing was Insurance again. Not about my baby, but about how they would get their money. And that «they don’t do same day appts» I asked what about emergencies when she broke her arm over the weekend and needs to get casted withiin 48 hours. She just kept saying no same day appts. Very rude and kept asking about insurance. Then I called Dr. Grogan in Santa Monica– first thing out of the receptionists mouth «oh poor baby, let me get you in as soon as possible» Now that’s what a Doctors office should say!
Go to someone that cares about patient and not how they are going to get paid.

Dr. Cunningham was amazing! He spent a lot of time with my daughter and explained everything so we could understand what was going on with her. I have been to many doctors and I couldn’t be happier with Dr. Cunningham as well as his staff. They were so kind and helpful and friendly. I truly had a wonderful experience!

I went to Dr. Cunningham through a recommendation from Dr. Aggarwal (my daughter’s Pediatrician).
My daughter is currently 2 years old and was diagnosed with Developmental Dysplasia of the Hip (DDH) at 3 weeks old.
I was scheduled for a week after I made an appointment with Dr. Cunningham. We came in for a consultation. He scheduled us to go to Long Beach Memorial Hospital a few days later for an ultrasound with a technician. We then returned for an appointment with Dr. Cunningham in which he confirmed my daughter did have DDH. He is a very quiet TALL man, but he is nice and will explain what you want and need with no hesitation.
He put her in a Pavlik harness for 6 weeks ²⁴⁄₇. At her 6 week appointment, he sent me back to the hospital again for another ultrasound and confirmed it was still a little minor, but got better. He adjusted her harness and decided to keep her in it only during the night for 6 more weeks.
After that appointment Dr. Cunningham performed an X-​ray at his office and confirmed she was ok to take her out of the harness! Since we caught her DDH so early, when her bones were pretty much like cartilage and «moldable,» surgery wasn’t necessary, THANK GOD.
Dr. Cunningham recommended we follow up once a year every year until he feels comfortable it’s not necessary. Which we did, when she turned 1 and 2 years old!
THE ONLY PROBLEM: The office wait time, it can be a little lengthy. While waiting in the office, you do see that he handles many patients (children) with several physical and mental deformities. It does break your heart to be there for something so «minor» when you see other children dealing with so much more. The inconvenience of when we had to drive to the hospital twice for an ultrasound, since his office didn’t have one there. Once we were able to start doing X-​rays, it wasn’t a problem, because he had one in his office. For my daughter’s 2NDappointment, it seems the office hired a person to «entertain» patients while they are sent back in the room waiting for Dr. Cunningham. She came and blew bubbles for my daughter when she was screaming crying after her X-​ray. She even brought her a coloring book and crayons. (I think they do this since they know the wait time is so long, but also to «calm» other kids so they don’t freak out hearing the other kids screaming their lungs out)
IN CONCLUSION: Dr. Cunningham is great. The office wait time, not good at all.

I actually cannot attest to Dr. Cunningham’s services. We never even got to see him. I recommend finding a pediatric orthopedic specialist who has a better office staff. I’m not exactly sure, but it seems they use a 3^rd party to make appointments. They are impossible to get ahold of. I spent at least an hour calling three separate times just to make an appointment. Then I was told my son could only be seen in the AM for his first appointment with Dr. Cunningham, so as a teacher I scheduled it for spring break. Meanwhile my son had an ER visit which required us to make an a separate appointment with Cunningham, which we later cancelled due to the recommendation of his pediatrician that we could just wait for the spring break appointment.
It took me thirty minutes to try to get his appointment cancelled. I ended up having to leave a message for them. This was beyond frustrating. Simple communication regarding appointments was an ordeal, and really that should have been my red flag to find somebody else. I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt.
These incompetent idiots ended up cancelling BOTH of my appointments without my consent. When I get to the appointment during spring break, they tell me I don’t have one. The story kept changing as they desperately tried to cover their mistakes. They made me wait over half an hour while they sorted the situation out, during which I found out they had in their notes that the patient called to cancel an appointment. Forty minutes later a man comes out and tells me they can’t see my son, and proceeds to accuse me of being a no-​show THREE TIMES (he couldn’t explain it to me when I asked him what three appointments those were), and he shrugged his shoulders and was indifferent when I asked why he is accusing me of being a no-​show when their computer said I called and cancelled. They were not apologetic and seemingly could care less that they wasted my time.
The office staff totally disrespected me and made no effort to resolve an error on their part. I simply do not have hours of my time to waste scheduling appointments, and then showing up to appointments that they can’t keep track of. I will not be back and let them know I don’t appreciate their incompetent business.
After making phone calls to other doctors, I found out that Cunningham’s office has had problems before and lots of patients complain. So, the office knew their schedulers are incompetent but still tried to blame me for the incompetency. Bad business! I do not recommend at all.