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Case Study:
Midwives Association of BC
MABC

Client Location

Vancouver, BC

Sectors

Healthcare & Medical Research

Client Since

October 2015

Supporting & Promoting Midwifery -- a fast-growing profession in Canada

Upon entering the offices of the Midwives Association of BC, you immediately notice a few things: the welcoming, homely atmosphere and the friendliness of the staff. Many of us at Exware did not have more than a cursory understanding of what being a midwife entailed but we came away from this project with a greater appreciation of the challenges facing the profession and a profound respect for the work that they do.

The Midwives Association of British Columbia (MABC) is the professional association for midwives in BC. In 2014, the association entered into a well publicized and lengthy contract negotiation with the government of BC and reached an agreement in December of that year for funding to improve programs and access to midwifery around the province.

Midwifery in Canada is a fast-growing profession and BC is leading Canada in midwife assisted births. "Midwives were involved in 9,175 births in the province last year — about 21 per cent of the total number of births - according to Alix Bacon, President of MABC, in a report released in 2016.

The MABC website needed to be modernized as a central hub to provide up-to-date information to the public on how and where to access midwifery care. Central to that was providing easy-to-use tools for midwives to update their own listings and add information on their places of practice to a searchable map on the website.

Find a Midwife

Search for a midwife by language, community, and/or the ability to provide care to refugees through the Interim Federal Health Program (IFH)

The association was also being increasingly taxed by the growing membership's needs and needed a faster, more efficient way of administering the array of member services which the association offers to its members.

After a series of meetings at the MABC office, the project began in earnest in the Winter of 2015. Requirements gathering sessions were held and specifications were painstakingly mapped out into specification documents. Exware held biweekly sprints with the development team and architected a series of custom modules which would integrate with the core ExSite AMS.

Of these, the most challenging module was an automated system for which midwives could change their midwifery registration status which in turn affected their payments for professional liability insurance accessed via membership with MABC.

Although at first glance, such a system seemed simple enough, it was complicated by the great number of statuses including but not limited to general registration, conditional registration and temporary registration. Each status carried its own pricing for insurance. In addition, midwives could make quarterly or annual payments and schedule payments in advance which meant that credit cards needed to be tokenized into a vault and provide automatic refunds when necessary.

In addition, systems were built for two important services offered by the association - the Midwife Emergency Skills Program and the Rural Locum Program.

Midwifery Emergency Skills Program (MESP) Course Listings

In BC, it is required that midwives recertify every 2 years through a process of online self-directed study in conjunction with participation in a 4-hour workshop guided by an MESP certified facilitator. Such a program ensures that all midwives in the province are up-to-date on the latest skills to manage care in a variety of emergency situations. The Exware team had lengthy discussions with the program coordinators to map out tools for course facilitators to post workshops and for midwives to register as well as download certificates upon completion of a workshop.

The objective of the second major program - the Rural Locum Program - is to increase the sustainability of rural midwifery in BC by assisting midwives to take reasonable periods of leave from midwifery practice.

Existing job placement tools built into the Exware system were extended to provide midwives real time information on placement opportunities which they could then apply to via a moderated process.

Rural Locum Program

The rural locum program is essential because many families travel long distances to access midwifery care and services are still not available in many rural communities

Work on the system continues to this day as we continue to explore new opportunities to empower the MABC team to take on new tasks. It continues to be a pleasure to work with everyone at MABC. Unexpectedly months after the first phase of the website launched we received a package sent to our offices in Gastown. Inside we received a genuinely nice surprise - a dart board with a photo of the MABC team printed on its surface. Not only are the team at MABC a pleasure to work with but they also have a wicked sense of humor.