Technical Innovation: The Automated Residency Match Rank List

The creation of the final rank list for the National Residency Matching Program every year is a laborious task requiring the time and input of numerous faculty members and residents. This article describes the creation of an automated visual rank list to efficiently organize and guide discussion at the yearly rank meeting so that the task may be efficiently and fairly completed. The rank list was created using a PowerPoint (Microsoft) macro that can pull information directly from a spreadsheet to generate a visual rank list that can be modified on-the-fly during the final rank list meeting. An automatically created visual rank list helps facilitate an efficient meeting and creates an open and transparent process leading to the final ranking.