Your case log after residency, what to save before you graduate.
Two days and four people, to pull five years of procedure reports for one hospital.
That’s what it took one physician whose residency logs were lost when the program director retired and the office closed. When a hospital asked for them, every procedure report from the next five years had to be gathered instead. It doesn’t happen to everyone. It’s also easy to avoid.Credentialing offices and new jobs can ask for your training cases years from now. This covers what happens to your ACGME Case Logs when you finish, what ACGME itself tells graduates to save, and what to do in your last few months.
What happens to your ACGME Case Logs when you finish
- You finish.Your program marks you as graduated in ACGME’s system.
- The archival date passes.From then on, you can’t add a case or fix one.
- Read-only, for good.You can still view and download your archived reports and data.
So the deadline that matters isn’t graduation day. It’s your specialty’s archival date, which kicks in once your program updates your status. Ask your coordinator when that is, and get every case in before then. More on logging before you graduate →
ACGME, How to prepare for the Case Logs Archival Process for Graduates (updated April 2026); ACGME, Case Log Access after Leaving a Program.
What ACGME tells graduates to save
ACGME recommends two things before you finish: a PDF of any reports you can run now, and the bulk Excel download of your case data. Its reason:
“…they may be required for future credentialing and employment applications.”
ACGME, to graduating residents and fellows
Save them somewhere you’ll still have in five years: your own cloud storage or your own computer. Not a hospital drive, and not an inbox that goes away with your badge.
ACGME, How to prepare for the Case Logs Archival Process for Graduates (updated April 2026).
Keep a way back into your ACGME account
If your ACGME sign-in codes go to your hospital email, you can lose your way in once that email shuts off. ACGME’s own advice: before you graduate, switch your multi-factor sign-in to text message. Or ask your program to put your personal email on your account in ADS while you’re still on the roster.
ACGME, How to prepare for the Case Logs Archival Process for Graduates (updated April 2026).
Why it matters later
Physicians write about it:
- The records were gone. The story at the top: a residency program director retired, the office closed, and the logs went with it. Five years later a hospital wanted proof, and pulling every procedure report from those years took two days and four people.
- Logging at the finish line. A resident who slacked off after hitting the minimums had to go back through the EMR and log about 150 more cases before the program director would sign the diploma.
- Billing logs aren’t your log. A practicing physician found the case logs from billers “wildly inaccurate”: some listed hearts they never did, others left out every block they’d done.
- Recent volume. An anesthesiologist returning after a break ran into a hospital rule asking for a minimum number of cases in the last 24 months.
Your training log is the start of that record. After residency, keeping it is on you. What hospitals ask for at credentialing →
Posts on Student Doctor Network, 2010 to 2023 (linked under Sources). These are individual stories, not statistics.
Your checklist
Before you graduate, keep these.
- Every case, logged now. Don’t save a year of cases for your last month.
- Your archival date. Ask your coordinator. That’s the real deadline.
- The bulk Excel download of your case data, from ACGME.
- A PDF of each report you can run, your minimums first.
- A copy you’ll still have in five years: your own cloud or computer.
- A way back in: ACGME sign-in codes by text, or your personal email on the account.
Nothing you keep should carry patient names, MRNs or birthdays. anesto.app/guides/case-log-after-residency
Where Anesto fits
If you log in Anesto, this part is already done. Log each case the way you’d say it, between cases, and send it to ACGME from your phone, free and with no limit: connect once, tap Send, and Anesto checks that it landed.
Your residency log is a free PDF with every case and your ACGME minimum counts. It’s on Progress, and it stays in Account after you graduate, so it comes with you to credentialing. No field for names, MRNs or birthdays.
| Requirement | In Anesto | On ACGME | Min. | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cardiac Surgery | 24 | 23 | 20 | met |
| Cesarean Section | 31 | 31 | 20 | met |
| Intracerebral Procedures | 17 | 16 | 20 | 3 short |
| Peripheral Nerve Blocks | 58 | 57 | 40 | met |
| Date | Procedure | Anesthesia | ASA |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10/16/2026 | Craniotomy | General | 3 |
| 10/16/2026 | Cesarean Section | Spinal | 2 |
Example with invented numbers.
Sources
- How to prepare for the Case Logs Archival Process for Graduates, ACGME Resident/Fellow help center, updated April 2026.
- Case Log Access after Leaving a Program, ACGME help center.
- ACGME: Instructions for Logging a TEE Case in the ACGME Case Log System, 3/2025 (on archiving).
- “Logging procedures”, Student Doctor Network, 2010.
- “ACGME case logs”, Student Doctor Network, 2018.
- “Case logs”, Student Doctor Network, 2023.
- “Credentialing for physicians with gaps in clinical practice”, Student Doctor Network, 2021.
ACGME’s pages are the authority. If anything here differs from them, they win, and your program has the final word on its own deadlines. Anesto is not affiliated with or endorsed by the ACGME.