Attorney Hannah Kimball joined Coeur d’Alene-based Malek + Malek in May, where she helps rural hospitals, healthcare nonprofits, and other health system clients manage their legal obligations.

Kimball received her master’s in healthcare policy and administration at Washington State University-Spokane in 2017, and graduated from the University of Idaho College of Law in 2024. Prior to her career as a healthcare attorney, Kimball, 33, worked for Pullman Regional Hospital in several corporate compliance and safety coordinator positions.

Outside of her professional career, Kimball says she enjoys woodworking and building custom cornhole board sets, which she donates to support regional nonprofit events. A fan of the outdoors, Kimball also spends her free time time fly fishing in North Idaho and cycling on local trails.

What drives your commitment to your industry? My true driving passion is the core belief that access to quality, compliant healthcare should be a basic human right in America. In rural areas, these entities support small towns by serving as vital community pillars and providing local job opportunities, while in urban environments, they provide care for large populations.

These small rural entities can struggle to get legal resources. While larger facilities have in-house counsel, these smaller facilities rely on their local attorneys, and it’s been neat to be so involved with those boards and with those administrative suites, and to be an integrated part of each of those facilities.

As long as I’m able to assist these healthcare entities in operating successfully, by guiding them through complex issues and an ever-evolving legal landscape, I consider my commitment entirely worthwhile.

What makes you good at your job? What makes me a good attorney stems from a positive, collaborative attitude and a deeply personal mission. I stumbled into the legal profession after working in an operational capacity leading compliance efforts at Pullman Regional Hospital. My core mission has always been to assist healthcare entities that stabilize rural communities, improve public health, and serve those with limited means.

That path led me to becoming an attorney, which is a role I am deeply grateful for, as it allows me to use my skillset to continue to support rural healthcare with as wide of a scope as possible.

People can tell that I really enjoy working with these rural entities — they know that I want to be there and they know that I’m going to prioritize them. For smaller health entities, knowing that they’re getting specialized attention, just like any larger facility does, is important to them, and hopefully is why they want to keep me around.

Where do you see your professional and community influence in the next decade? Professionally, I see my influence centered on helping rural healthcare entities take a proactive approach to long-term sustainability. 

Rural clinics and hospitals are operating in a much harsher climate today than ever before. Without innovating service models and considering how different operational approaches impact organizational longevity, we risk seeing our area affected by hospital closures, similar to what the Southern states have experienced.

The conversation isn’t so much about checking boxes in healthcare anymore. It’s about how we can pivot and stay ahead of our financial requirements. How do we run this as an entity that’s up against some really big barriers, and what do we need to do today to ensure our future? It’s about having more honest and insightful conversation with hospital boards.

My goal over the next decade is to provide the legal framework and strategic guidance necessary to keep these essential services open and to partner with local boards to see this new era of medicine through.

Personally, I want to influence our community to actively protect, preserve, and enjoy our public spaces. I feel incredibly lucky to live somewhere with unfettered access to the recreational playground we call home, and I want to ensure we maintain that tradition.

Have you been influenced by any mentors in the Inland Northwest business community? My mother has been a huge influence on my professional life. She has served as the CEO of the Tri-City Regional Chamber of Commerce for over 20 years. As I have navigated my career path, I have felt increasingly grateful to have been raised by a CEO.

Over the years, she has casually spoke of her presentations to the governor on "economic gardening," shared how she calmly and strategically navigated difficult conversations with high-powered community executives, collaborated with various businesses to strengthen communities, and how she always reminds me that not every situation requires any reaction at all.

She's my first call if I have to navigate a hard interpersonal question. She's fantastic at personal relationships; at being very strategic. She's very good at working with difficult personalities to get something done for the greater community good, and she's been a fantastic resource on that end.

And it's just neat to be able to call your mom about professional advice as an attorney.

What helpful advice do you have for others to follow? I think building relationships is an art that we are slowly losing as a society, and it's one that has served me well. So much of business is still relationship-driven, and those relationships can be electronic. You could never meet someone in person, but you could have an email relationship and build rapport and camaraderie and connections with people all over the world now. That relationship building needs to happen.

My mother would give me such great advice every time I called her. Maybe there was drama in law school, or drama with my career starting out, but her advice has always been that not everything requires a reaction.

Our response is always to jump up in arms about things and submit a written response or a verbal response, or everyone’s got to have an opinion. Her best advice, that has served me very well, is that not everything requires that. Maybe this issue is going to take a little bit of time. Something’s going to blow over, and then we can reapproach and reattack in a different direction if needed.