Children’s National forms a five-year partnership to use Chiefly. Find out why.

Children’s National runs one of the larger pediatric residencies in the country, with 123 residents across three years and several tracks. Its block schedule was built the way most programs build theirs: by the chiefs, in Excel, from last year’s template.

Then came three layers of review: the outgoing chiefs proofread for rules the new chiefs didn’t know yet, the program director sent back new rotation cadences, and the rotation directors caught staffing errors everyone else had missed. Each round was harder than the last, because residents whose schedules already worked couldn’t be moved.

The 2025-26 schedule went out on May 19, 2025. The two years before, the preliminary schedule landed on May 21 and May 17. For a resident, that is only six weeks’ notice of where the next year goes, which is not ideal.

For 2026-27, the chiefs set three goals with Chiefly. Here is how each one was met.

Release the schedule months earlier. The year before, the preliminary schedule came out on May 15. This time:

The final schedule followed on March 26 for rising second- and third-years and April 16 for the matched interns.

Far fewer people on the build. One chief built the schedule instead of four. She took in resident requests, Chiefly turned them into a preliminary schedule that satisfied the program’s rules in under an hour, and her job became tinkering, which is where Chiefly shines as much as it does on the first build.

After her week of tinkering, the draft went to the other chiefs and the program director, then to the rotation directors a week later. That is how Chiefly builds the schedule in every program (how it works).

More flexibility and control for residents. Residents’ requests shaped the first draft. Then, with the schedule out in February, they had a month to trade blocks with each other in the Swap Portal, each trade checked against the rules and approved by a chief in seconds.

Dr. Martinson made two points about running the schedule herself in Chiefly.

1. Chiefs need to tinker, and Chiefly nails it

The first build is only the start. Changes come up several times a week: a weekend switch, a career switch, a family switch. A chief needs to try each one, see what it does to the rest of the schedule and answer the resident quickly. Chiefly is as strong at that as it is at the build.

That’s why Chiefly is both a service and software: our team sets up your rules and answers your questions, and you make the schedule changes yourself (why you need both).

2. Chiefly is easy to learn, and it helps others learn scheduling faster

New software usually means more work to learn. At Children’s National, Chiefly had the opposite effect. Colleagues picked it up quickly and read the schedule faster than they had in Excel, because they could see the schedule and their options at once instead of counting cells.

Chiefs schedule in the gaps: after clinic, late at night, between other work. That is when a tired brain approves a change that breaks staffing three blocks later.

At most programs, a released schedule is final except for parental leave and emergencies, and a swap means finding a partner, emailing the chiefs and waiting. Children’s National did the opposite: because the schedule was out three months early, residents got a one-month window to trade blocks in the Swap Portal before it was final. Residents there had never been able to trade their own blocks before.

A resident asks for a change, say cardiology instead of the ICU in block two. Chiefly checks it against the program’s rules and ACGME requirements, gets an OK from every resident it affects, then sends it to a chief to sign off. No one sends an email.

About 85% of residents who could swap took part, chiefs approved 107 swaps, nearly half of all requests were settled among residents before a chief saw them, and the whole month took an hour or less of chief time.

Requests picked up through the month as residents realized what they could move: vacation to the week that actually works, the heaviest rotations spaced out across the year, cardiology or the NICU pulled into the first quarter.

The schedule even came up on Instagram:

Hours saved only matter for what they buy. At Children’s National, three things changed that had nothing to do with the schedule itself.

Residents chose their training. Swaps weren’t only about vacation. Residents moved cardiology or the NICU into the first quarter of the year, and some stacked two or three subspecialties early, to decide what to apply to. The numbers are in the Swap Portal case study.

Chiefs reinvested their time in other areas. With one chief on scheduling, the other three took on work that had never fit before: a new didactics calendar with resident wellness time, an X+Y+Z schedule that protects call, new ICU staffing, and a patient-safety initiative on which team owns a patient between the emergency department and the floor.

The next chiefs started a step ahead. With the block schedule released in February, the incoming chiefs could begin on the daily and rotation schedules at once, and residents got those earlier too.

After that first year, Children’s National began a five-year partnership with Chiefly.

Dr. Martinson’s class was the first at Children’s National to onboard onto Chiefly. The program sent its rules in the documents it already had, and Chiefly handled the rest.

The rules outlived the chiefs who set them, which is the part most programs lose every June.

Each new chief class is trained, and the rules, residents and settings roll over to the next year (what happens when chiefs graduate).