diff --git a/medcat/config_meta_cat.py b/medcat/config_meta_cat.py
index 42a9dab7..7f92ca78 100644
--- a/medcat/config_meta_cat.py
+++ b/medcat/config_meta_cat.py
@@ -133,6 +133,12 @@ class Model(MixingConfig, BaseModel):
 
     NB! For these changes to take effect, the pipe would need to be recreated.
     """
+    load_bert_pretrained_weights: bool = False
+    """
+    Applicable only when using BERT:
+    Determines if the pretrained weights for BERT are loaded
+    This should be True if you don't plan on using the model pack weights"""
+
     num_layers: int = 2
     """Number of layers in the model (both LSTM and BERT)
 
@@ -164,7 +170,9 @@ class Model(MixingConfig, BaseModel):
 
     Paper reference - https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7533053"""
     category_undersample: str = ''
-    """When using 2 phase learning, this category is used to undersample the data"""
+    """When using 2 phase learning, this category is used to undersample the data
+    The number of samples in the category sets the upper limit for all categories"""
+
     model_architecture_config: Dict = {'fc2': True, 'fc3': False,'lr_scheduler': True}
     """Specifies the architecture for BERT model.
 
diff --git a/medcat/meta_cat.py b/medcat/meta_cat.py
index e4e647d7..f9b54d9f 100644
--- a/medcat/meta_cat.py
+++ b/medcat/meta_cat.py
@@ -51,11 +51,13 @@ class MetaCAT(PipeRunner):
     def __init__(self,
                  tokenizer: Optional[TokenizerWrapperBase] = None,
                  embeddings: Optional[Union[Tensor, numpy.ndarray]] = None,
-                 config: Optional[ConfigMetaCAT] = None) -> None:
+                 config: Optional[ConfigMetaCAT] = None,
+                 save_dir_path: Optional[str] = None) -> None:
         if config is None:
             config = ConfigMetaCAT()
         self.config = config
         set_all_seeds(config.general['seed'])
+        self.save_dir_path = save_dir_path
 
         if tokenizer is not None:
             # Set it in the config
@@ -90,7 +92,7 @@ def get_model(self, embeddings: Optional[Tensor]) -> nn.Module:
 
         elif config.model['model_name'] == 'bert':
             from medcat.utils.meta_cat.models import BertForMetaAnnotation
-            model = BertForMetaAnnotation(config)
+            model = BertForMetaAnnotation(config,self.save_dir_path)
 
             if not config.model.model_freeze_layers:
                 peft_config = LoraConfig(task_type=TaskType.SEQ_CLS, inference_mode=False, r=8, lora_alpha=16,
@@ -380,6 +382,9 @@ def save(self, save_dir_path: str) -> None:
         model_save_path = os.path.join(save_dir_path, 'model.dat')
         torch.save(self.model.state_dict(), model_save_path)
 
+        if self.config.model.model_name == 'bert':
+            model_config_save_path = os.path.join(save_dir_path, 'bert_config.json')
+            self.model.bert_config.to_json_file(model_config_save_path) # type: ignore
         # This is everything we need to save from the class, we do not
         # save the class itself.
 
@@ -416,7 +421,7 @@ def load(cls, save_dir_path: str, config_dict: Optional[Dict] = None) -> "MetaCA
             tokenizer = TokenizerWrapperBERT.load(save_dir_path, config.model.model_variant)
 
         # Create meta_cat
-        meta_cat = cls(tokenizer=tokenizer, embeddings=None, config=config)
+        meta_cat = cls(tokenizer=tokenizer, embeddings=None, config=config,save_dir_path=save_dir_path)
 
         # Load the model
         model_save_path = os.path.join(save_dir_path, 'model.dat')
diff --git a/medcat/utils/meta_cat/models.py b/medcat/utils/meta_cat/models.py
index 543e0ca6..6b59c2a7 100644
--- a/medcat/utils/meta_cat/models.py
+++ b/medcat/utils/meta_cat/models.py
@@ -87,16 +87,35 @@ def forward(self,
 class BertForMetaAnnotation(nn.Module):
     _keys_to_ignore_on_load_unexpected: List[str] = [r"pooler"]  # type: ignore
 
-    def __init__(self, config):
+    def __init__(self, config, save_dir_path=None):
         super(BertForMetaAnnotation, self).__init__()
-        _bertconfig = AutoConfig.from_pretrained(config.model.model_variant,num_hidden_layers=config.model['num_layers'])
+        if save_dir_path:
+            try:
+                _bertconfig = AutoConfig.from_pretrained(save_dir_path + "/bert_config.json",
+                                                     num_hidden_layers=config.model['num_layers'])
+            except Exception:
+                _bertconfig = AutoConfig.from_pretrained(config.model.model_variant,
+                                                         num_hidden_layers=config.model['num_layers'])
+                logger.info("BERT config not found locally — downloaded successfully from Hugging Face.")
+
+        else:
+            _bertconfig = AutoConfig.from_pretrained(config.model.model_variant,num_hidden_layers=config.model['num_layers'])
+
         if config.model['input_size'] != _bertconfig.hidden_size:
             logger.warning("Input size for %s model should be %d, provided input size is %d. Input size changed to %d",config.model.model_variant,_bertconfig.hidden_size,config.model['input_size'],_bertconfig.hidden_size)
 
-        bert = BertModel.from_pretrained(config.model.model_variant, config=_bertconfig)
+        if config.model['load_bert_pretrained_weights']:
+            try:
+                bert = BertModel.from_pretrained(config.model.model_variant, config=_bertconfig)
+            except Exception:
+                raise Exception("Could not load BERT pretrained weights from Hugging Face. \nIf you're seeing a connection error, set `config.model.load_bert_pretrained_weights=False` and make sure to load the model pack from disk instead.")
+        else:
+            bert = BertModel(_bertconfig)
+
         self.config = config
         self.config.use_return_dict = False
         self.bert = bert
+        self.bert_config = _bertconfig
         self.num_labels = config.model["nclasses"]
         for param in self.bert.parameters():
             param.requires_grad = not config.model.model_freeze_layers