Healthcare Administration — Portfolio Projects
Build projects that demonstrate revenue-cycle judgment — denial resolution, AR follow-up, and compliance awareness — not generic office-admin tasks.
Project 1: Denial Reason-Code Taxonomy and Appeal Templates
Level: Beginner | Time: 2 days
Build a reference taxonomy of common claim-denial reason codes (e.g., missing authorization, medical necessity, timely filing, duplicate claim, coordination-of-benefits issues) and write a short, correct appeal-letter template for each.
Steps
Skills Demonstrated
Note
Specific payer denial codes (CARC/RARC) and timely-filing windows vary by payer and are updated periodically — verify current denial/reason-code definitions against current payer or CMS guidance before treating a specific code's meaning as fixed.
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Project 2: AR Aging Analysis and Follow-Up Prioritization
Level: Intermediate | Time: 3-4 days
Build a mock accounts-receivable aging report (0-30/31-60/61-90/90+ day buckets) and design a follow-up prioritization plan that reflects realistic collection risk, not just chronological order.
Steps
Skills Demonstrated
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Project 3: End-to-End RCM Process Map with Compliance Checkpoints
Level: Advanced | Time: 1 week
Map the full revenue-cycle process — registration through payment posting — and annotate it with the compliance checkpoints at each stage (where documentation, authorization, or coding accuracy failures typically originate).
Steps
Skills Demonstrated
Portfolio Artifact Name
rcm-process-map
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Tips for Great Projects
Ground every project in realistic claim data, even if you construct it yourself — denial management is a documentation-and-detail discipline, and abstract projects don't demonstrate it.
Explain root causes, not just fixes. A strong RCM candidate can explain why a denial pattern keeps recurring, not just how to appeal one instance of it.
Know which numbers matter. Days in AR, denial rate, first-pass resolution rate — being fluent in the metrics RCM teams actually track is a real differentiator.
Flag anything payer-specific as needing verification. Denial codes and filing deadlines vary by payer and change over time — showing you know to check rather than assume is itself a professional signal.