Questions about Chiefly and residency scheduling, answered

Chiefly is both residency scheduling software and a service for graduate medical education (GME) programs. Its team sets up your program’s rules, and the software builds the block, daily, call and clinic schedules residents work as one integrated system, so a change on the block side carries through to the rest. Chiefs re-run the schedule themselves in minutes, and every program gets a dedicated scheduling advisor. Chiefly is used by chief residents, coordinators, program directors and associate program directors at more than 20 residency programs, across many specialties.

Chiefly builds every schedule a residency runs on: the block schedule, plus daily, call and clinic schedules, all from your program’s rules.

Any specialty. Chiefly builds each program’s schedule from that program’s own rules, so it fits the way your specialty schedules. Chiefly is used by more than 20 residency programs across seven specialties. As Sasha Adams, MD, FACS, program director at UTHealth Houston, put it, “We all have the same ACGME rules, but our way of manifesting that into our schedules is very different … your ability to adapt to that makes it really helpful.”

Yes. Chiefly works for a single residency program or across your entire GME department. Each program’s schedule is built from its own rules, access is set per program by role, and every program gets a dedicated scheduling advisor. Germane Solutions, the GME consulting firm, also uses Chiefly to help its clients.

Programs on Chiefly have released schedules months earlier and saved hundreds to thousands of hours. Boston Children’s (the Boston Combined Residency Program), with 188 residents across two hospitals, had a fully ACGME-compliant block schedule within a week and saved more than 3,600 chief and admin hours in its first eight months, worth an estimated $223,000 to $273,000, a 10 to 12 times return on investment (ROI). Children’s National released its schedule on February 18, three months earlier than the year before, with one chief on the build instead of four. Augusta University absorbed a 30% complement increase and avoided more than 200 hours of manual scheduling. UVA Pediatrics built its academic year in a week and a half and saved 513 chief hours, and UTHealth Houston renewed for a second year. As Ted Sectish, program director of the Boston Combined Residency Program, put it, “They have found solutions that have positively contributed to a reduction in scheduling burden and have helped us automate tedious tasks.”

No. Chiefly’s team loads everything from last year’s schedule and your requirements, so setup is hands-off for your program, and Chiefly generates the block schedule. At Children’s National, one chief built the 2026-27 schedule instead of four. Your chiefs keep full control: they can change a rule and re-run the live schedule or edit it by hand, with every edit checked against your rules, and our team runs re-runs whenever they ask. Every program gets a dedicated scheduling advisor, training for chiefs and admins, and quarterly check-ins. As Alexandra Martinson, MD, 2025-26 chief resident at Children’s National, put it, “Tinkering from an already built template is way easier than trying to build something from scratch.”

Chiefly’s team does the setup for you: your program sends last year’s schedule and its requirements, and we load everything, so setup is hands-off. Chiefly then generates the block schedule from your rules, and your scheduling advisor walks your chiefs and coordinators through it. As Augusta University’s Patrick Hatch put it, “The onboarding process was super easy… Ten stars out of ten.”

Chiefly works to your program’s timeline: we work back from your internal deadlines, and if you need your schedule sooner, we can expedite onboarding. Our team loads last year’s schedule and your requirements for you, and once your rules are loaded, re-running the schedule takes minutes. As Jess Angerman, scheduling manager for the Boston Combined Residency Program, put it, “Based on the amount of information we gave you, it did not take nearly as long as I thought it would to have all of our rules in place and output a solution.”

Chiefly has a clean, simple pricing model that works for both small and large programs, as well as across your entire GME department. We’re happy to provide a quote once we’ve met and can better understand your program’s needs.

Nothing resets when new chiefs start in July. Chiefly works like the TurboTax of residency scheduling: your rules, residents and settings roll over to the next academic year in minutes, with incoming matched residents added, so the next chief class starts from last year’s logic instead of a blank spreadsheet. Each new chief class gets its own training, and your scheduling advisor stays the same. As a Children’s National chief put it, “Our rules were coded in, so we knew exactly what they were and handed them off to the next chiefs.”

A residency block schedule is the year-long plan that assigns each resident to a rotation in each block of the academic year, usually four weeks or a month at a time. It sets which services are staffed and when clinic and vacation weeks fall. Chiefly generates the block schedule from your program’s rules and re-runs it when things change.

An X+Y schedule alternates X weeks of inpatient or other rotations with Y weeks of outpatient clinic, repeating through the year; 4+1 and 6+2 are common. Chiefly supports X+Y schedules: its team loads your pattern with the rest of your rules, and Chiefly generates the block schedule around it.

Chiefly handles whatever rules your program schedules by, from ACGME requirements to your program’s own, plus the hundreds of nuances we’ve built up over many GME clients, so the quirk your program thinks is unique has usually been loaded before. Chiefly’s team loads them during setup, and Chiefly builds your block, daily, call and clinic schedules around them.

Chiefly balances the workload across residents the way your program defines fair. Our team loads your program’s fairness rules with the rest of its requirements, and Chiefly builds the year against all of them, so no resident ends up with a heavier share by accident. When something changes mid-year, Chiefly re-runs the schedule against the same rules, so a late fix doesn’t quietly undo the balance.

Yes. Chiefly saves every version of the schedule so you can compare drafts and see what changed, and clients have tinkered with their schedules in Chiefly more than 14,000 times. You can change staffing or a rule and re-generate instantly, in a scenario or on the live schedule itself, for example to compare a 4+1 with a 6+2 pattern before you commit. As a 2024-25 chief resident at the Boston Combined Residency Program put it, “The tool is the only thing I have seen or heard about that lets you test a scenario without rebuilding everything or spending hours moving people around by hand.”

Yes. Chiefly exports the schedule to an Excel (.xlsx) file anytime: for residents, for rotation directors who need to know well in advance who’s on their service, or for other tools. If you use another scheduling tool to publish your schedule, our team will format the file to match that platform’s upload format.

Yes, if you want them to. Residents can see their own schedules in Chiefly, in a browser on their computer, and start swap requests there; it’s optional, not required. Many programs also share the schedule as an Excel file, which works for residents and for rotation directors who need to know well in advance who’s on their service.

Your chiefs re-run the schedule themselves around parental leave, off-cycle residents and late starts, and get the result in minutes, with every version saved so you can compare drafts before you publish. At Children’s National, when a resident was pulled from a rotation at the last minute, figuring out who to move took 15 to 30 minutes instead of a week or more. For swaps, the Swap Portal puts the power in residents’ hands: they start a swap themselves, and each one is checked against your rules before a chief approves it. Chiefs and coordinators can also make swaps directly from an admin view, with more controls. As Patrick Hatch, IT project coordinator at Augusta University, put it, “Some changes that would take us hours and hours to accomplish manually, [Chiefly] comes back in minutes and says, here’s the solution.”

Your chiefs re-run the block schedule themselves in minutes when these changes happen, with your program’s rules intact for the rest of the year, so there are no more hours of staring at the screen chasing the domino effect of a large mid-year change. Every version is saved, so you can compare the re-run with the original before you publish it.

Residents request swaps in Chiefly’s Swap Portal, each request is checked against your program’s rules, and a chief approves it. Chiefs and coordinators can also make swaps directly from an admin view, with more controls. A swap that would break a rule is caught before anyone signs off. At Children’s National, a chief’s review took about 15 seconds per swap. As Alexandra Martinson, MD, 2025-26 chief resident at Children’s National, put it, “Residency is a really rigid schedule. So for them to feel like they have any control over their schedule was exciting.”

Yes. Chiefly’s resident progress dashboard shows whether each resident is on track toward graduation, and tracking carries into the next academic year at rollover. Our team loads the requirements at setup, and everyone with access to your program, including the program director, can open the dashboard.

Chiefly loads your ACGME requirements as rules alongside your program’s own and generates the block schedule against all of them. Every build, re-run and swap is checked, and anything Chiefly can’t meet is flagged before the schedule goes out. Chiefly applies the core ACGME duty-hour rules to daily, call and clinic schedules too. As Alexandra Martinson, MD, 2025-26 chief resident at Children’s National, put it, “Chiefly always had that check on the back end to make sure we weren’t making quantitative errors with staffing and ACGME requirements.”

Under the ACGME Common Program Requirements effective July 1, 2026, residents work at most 80 hours a week, averaged over four weeks (6.20), with at least one day in seven free (6.21.b) and 14 hours off after 24 hours of in-house call (6.21.a). Continuous duty is capped at 24 hours plus up to 4 for handoffs (6.22), and in-house call comes no more than every third night, averaged (6.27). Chiefly applies these core rules to daily, call and clinic schedules and checks the block schedule against your ACGME requirements, so a problem shows up while you’re building, not after the schedule goes out.

The 80-hour weekly limit is averaged over four weeks, not applied week by week (Common Program Requirements 6.20), so one heavy week can be balanced by lighter ones. Days off and in-house call frequency are averaged over four weeks too. Chiefly checks the 80-hour week as it builds daily, call and clinic schedules, so an overloaded stretch surfaces before residents ever see the schedule.

ACGME Institutional Requirement 4.8 gives residents at least six weeks of approved medical, parental and caregiver leave, available from the first day and at least once in each ACGME-accredited program, at 100% of salary, plus one reserved week of paid time off. When a resident takes leave, even partway through a block, Chiefly re-runs the block schedule around it so coverage and your other rules hold for the rest of the year, and saves every version so you can compare before you publish.

Possibly. ACGME’s proposed revision, whose comment period closed October 22, 2026, keeps the 80-hour week and the 24+4 limit but cuts rest after 24-hour in-house call from 14 to 12 hours and drops the every-third-night call limit. Its proposed effective date is July 1, 2028, so the requirements that took effect July 1, 2026 still apply. Chiefly follows the requirements in effect today, and if the revision takes effect, Chiefly’s team updates your program’s rules for you.

Chiefly is both, and that’s the point: Chiefly’s team loads your rules and is there for questions, and your chiefs run every change themselves. A service alone means waiting on email for each change, and software alone leaves the setup to your chiefs. At Children’s National, running changes in Chiefly turned a week of deliberation into 15 to 30 minutes. As Patrick Hatch, IT project coordinator at Augusta University, put it, “If we needed a standing two-hour meeting with Chiefly every week to sort these things out, it would have delayed things tremendously. The tool works so well for us that we figure it out on our own.”

Chiefly builds the residency schedule itself: our team loads your rules, Chiefly generates the block, daily, call and clinic schedules, and it re-runs them as leave and changes come in, with rule-checked swaps, saved versions and graduation tracking across years. In most programs, the planning and building still happen in Excel, which chiefs tell us takes about half their year, and Amion or QGenda mostly publish the result. Chiefly replaces the spreadsheet and works alongside whatever you publish in. As Allie Doles, DO, at Augusta University, put it, “[Chiefly] significantly accelerated the rate at which we could complete the schedule. From months to weeks.”

No. Most programs keep Amion or QGenda to publish the schedule and show who’s on call, and use Chiefly for the planning, building and tinkering that usually happen in Excel. Chiefly exports to Excel anytime, and our team formats the file to match the upload format of the tool you already use.

No. Chiefly replaces the scheduling work your chiefs already do in Excel; it doesn’t add another system to keep up. Our team loads your rules, Chiefly builds the schedule, and you can download it to Excel anytime, formatted for Amion, QGenda or whatever your hospital already uses. It runs in a web browser, so there’s nothing to install.

You can keep Excel as an output, but Chiefly takes over the building. Chiefly’s team loads your rules, Chiefly generates the block schedule, and the result exports to Excel whenever you need a spreadsheet. At Children’s National, a week of tinkering in Chiefly replaced five to seven weeks in Excel, and UVA Pediatrics built its academic year in a week and a half and saved 513 chief hours. As Allie Doles, DO, at Augusta University, put it, “Prior to Chiefly, you literally locked yourself in a room and nobody talked to you for days, because you have to play puzzle master Tetris in your head.”

HIPAA doesn’t apply to Chiefly’s data, because Chiefly stores no patient data or protected health information (PHI). It holds workforce scheduling data only: resident names, institutional email addresses, training years, rotation assignments and your program’s rules. It isn’t connected to your EHR, so no business associate agreement (BAA) is needed.

Chiefly runs on Amazon Web Services in the United States, and your data stays in the US. It’s encrypted in transit and at rest, including backups, and restoring from backup is tested. Users sign in with a password or with Google, multi-factor authentication is available to everyone, and Chiefly staff must use it for any administrative access. Our written security policies are reviewed every year.

Only the people you invite. Access is set per program by role: program directors, coordinators and chiefs build and edit the schedule, and residents, if you turn on resident access, can view the published schedule and submit requests. Chiefly staff access your data only to set up and support your program, and that access requires multi-factor authentication and is logged.

Yes. Chiefly has completed security reviews for more than a dozen health systems and academic medical centers, including HECVAT and CORL assessments. We share our security policies and our incident response, disaster recovery and business continuity plans with your IT team, and fill out your institution’s own questionnaire. There’s nothing to install: Chiefly runs in a modern web browser, with no VPN or firewall changes.

You leave with a full copy. When a contract ends, or anytime you ask in writing, Chiefly provides a complete export of your data in Excel or CSV, then deletes it from production systems, and deleted data ages out of backups after that. Chiefly doesn’t keep customer data for any other purpose.