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Learning Collaborative for Birth Center Sustainability

  • Are you sacrificing a livable wage to keep your birth center afloat?

  • Are you frustrated by payers who don't understand your value in maternal health? 

  • Are you avoiding insurance contracts altogether?

You’re not alone. This is the reality for birth centers across the country. Join a community of birth center leaders as we change the tide.

Imagine a sustainable future. One where payors understand your birth center’s true value, and you are able to effectively advocate for equitable reimbursement.

Enroll in AABC's Learning Collaborative for Birth Center Sustainability. Gain the blueprint and tools to navigate legal considerations, confidently negotiate with payors using regional price data, and build collaborative relationships with other birth centers. This course equips you with actionable tools and tactics to secure contracts that reflect the essential care you provide. 

Following completion of the course, you'll have the option to purchase a state-specific data report to strengthen your negotiations.

Birth centers may find it beneficial to have two or more staff attend the learning collaborative. Group discounts available. For your best learning experience, we recommend that participants are familiar with budgeting and basic billing practices. AABC has toolkits to provide foundational resources. 

Summer Registration Now Open
In-Person at the Birth Institute

Achieving equity for birth centers would not be possible without the tenacious advocacy of our AABC members. Due to your efforts and your utilization of what you’ve learned in the Learning Collaborative course, here is some incredible forward momentum happening in Pennsylvania!

  • Pennsylvania first utilized what they learned from the course, including the power of a unified voice for all birth centers in the state, to establish a chapter and aim for Medicaid reimbursement.
  • They then used the LCBCS course’s PowerPoint and tailored it to Medicaid for a press conference and round table discussion with the Secretary of DHS and Secretary of the Department of Health. Members share that “jaws dropped,” and that crucial conversations have been started about barriers for birth centers that the officials were completely unaware of prior to seeing this presentation.

  • As a result of the conversations started at this round table, a new meeting has been set with state Medicaid to aim for reimbursement! Information shared by members at the most recent LCBCS office hours has even inspired the strategies our Pennsylvania members are planning to use in this upcoming meeting.

ONLINE - participants can take the class online in a live series of weekly 2-hour classes. Each session will run 8 weeks.

  • Session 1: April/May 2025
  • Session 2: June 16 - August 4, Mondays from 12:00 - 2:00pm ET. Registration now open.
  • Session 3: October/November 2025

IN-PERSON

  • September 9-11, 2025 in Portland, Oregon. This will be a multi-day pre-conference workshop at the 2025 AABC Birth Institute.

Workshop Registration Fee 

  • $800 AABC Birth Center Members
  • $1855 Non-Members (includes AABC Birth Center membership).

Save $50 for each attendee when you register 2+ people to attend. Contact AABC at 215.234.8068 to inquire about multiple registration discount.

Data Report Fee

  • $1200/AABC Birth Center Member

Upon completion of the course, participants will be eligible to purchase a data report customized to their state, which includes reimbursement details by key codes, insurances, and comparatives. 

Scholarships - Scholarships are available through the AABC Diversity + Inclusion Scholarship Program. Learn more>>

Claudia Jennings

Claudia has worked with midwives at freestanding birth centers for 6 years and is proud to have held many operational roles, most recently as the administrative director of a birth center in MN. She provides behind the scenes support to ensure midwives can provide excellent clinical care and get paid appropriately for doing so! She is passionate about the value of the freestanding birth center model and how to demonstrate it, barriers to higher payment for birth centers and midwives, and ways to create operational and billing efficiency in the birth center model.

Erica Biesinger, MBA

Erica has been involved in the birth center community since 2014 when she joined the staff at The Midwife Center in Pittsburgh as the Finance and Operations Manager.  Since then, she's provided ongoing administrative support to the birth center including overseeing all financial aspects of the Center and helping to expand  both the facility and programs offered.  She is passionate about the independent, free-standing birth center model and the midwifery model of care. Her goal is to have that shine through in her administrative work, while improving the ongoing financial health of the birth center.

Brianna Bennett

Brianna is an expert in birth center administration and an experienced nonprofit medical manager.  She has served as faculty for AABC for more than 10 years teaching workshops throughout the U.S., consulting with midwives, medical leaders, and entrepreneurs.  She understands all facets of financial management, HR, marketing, program development, and business grit. 

Jillian Helleloid

Jillian has been working in the medical billing and coding field with freestanding birth centers since 2017. In 2025 Jillian opened her own consulting business, Bloom Birth Center Consulting, to assist midwives and birth centers with everything from contracting & billing to administrative support.

In addition to her professional experience, Jillian is a member of the IRC committee and currently serves as the treasurer of the Minnesota Chapter of AABC where she has been actively involved in advancing legislative changes to support birth centers in Minnesota.