Hypothesizing that metrics on contouring efficiency improve through years of training, we evaluated treatment planning efficiency to improve clinical and educational operations in an academic program. Since 2009, an electronic whiteboard built with Oracle Apex has been used at our institution to track treatment courses through all phases of active planning. From scheduling of the CT simulation through plan generation to completion of QA, all steps are tracked and task notifications are sent to staff automatically. Both our main facility (three linear accelerators) and a satellite facility (two linear accelerators) are included. This study analyzes courses for the time residents required to contour and its relationship to each resident's year of training. Time to contour is the interval from importing the CT to being ready for attending evaluation. Only treatment courses containing the requisite time points in order (ready for contours, ready for attending review, contours approved, plan approved) recording the involvement of a resident with at least three consecutive years of data were utilized. Of the 9,863 courses, 4,620 (46.8%) contained the necessary time points reflecting participation of longitudinally evaluable residents. Excluded plans included brachytherapy, stereotactic radiosurgery, simulation and treatment plans, plans contoured by attendings, and others in which temporal waypoints were not included or were documented in an unusual sequence. Within each year of training, residents demonstrated substantial differences both in the number of contours and the time required (see table). While the total number of cases completed annually decreased as residents invested progressively more time on research and other elective rotations, there was no clinically significant alteration in the mean time required to complete contouring of each case. When data from individual residents were evaluated over at least 3 years of training, only 3 of 13 residents had longitudinal differences in contouring times; of these, 2 decreased mean contouring times by 7.6 and 2.2 hours annually (P = 0.024, 0.012) while 1 increased mean time by 5.8 hours annually (P = 0.045). Furthermore, the number of contours a resident completed annually did not correlate with the mean time required to complete each contour (P = 0.36). Although residents consistently contoured fewer patients during subsequent years of training, the time to complete this task did not diminish either when data were evaluated in aggregate or when residents' individual longitudinal performances were compared. This study provides benchmarks for treatment planning process improvement in academic centers with residency programs.Abstract 3025; Table 1.Year of TrainingPGY2PGY3PGY4PGY5Number of Residents16161312Mean Number of Cases (SD)100.3 (54.9)85.7 (38.0)72.7 (27.9)58.7 (15.5)Mean Hours to Contour (SD)33.6 (40.0)34.8 (42.3)31.6 (41.0)38.1 (46.7) Open table in a new tab