HL7 Table HL70260: Patient Location Type

HL70260 (also called Person Location Type) describes the kind of location named in a PL data type — clinic, department, home, nursing unit, operating room, ward, or "other." It sits in PL.6, the sixth component of the PL data type, and travels alongside the structural identifiers (facility, building, point of care, room, bed) that make up the rest of the PL. The code set is small, stable, and HL7-defined.

Purpose

HL70260 lets a receiver understand the semantics of a location reference without having to look up the location identifier in a master file. A PL with point-of-care ER01 is more meaningful when PL.6 is N (Nursing Unit) than when it is C (Clinic) — the same identifier could in principle exist in either context. PL.6 disambiguates.

It is also the bridge to FHIR Location.physicalType and Location.type. FHIR receivers that need to render or filter locations by kind (all wards, all operating rooms) rely on this single component rather than having to parse the identifier or consult a master file.

Where it's used

• PL.6 — the canonical home of HL70260. PL appears in many places, most prominently:
• PV1-3 Assigned Patient Location, PV1-6 Prior Patient Location, PV1-11 Temporary Location, PV1-42 Pending Location, PV1-43 Prior Temporary Location — all PL-typed.
• OBR-13 Relevant Clinical Information in some profiles when carrying a structured location.
• LOC-5 Location Type on the Location Master File segment.

Code list

Code system OID

• OID: 2.16.840.1.113883.18.114
• Canonical URI: http://terminology.hl7.org/CodeSystem/v2-0260

The OID resolves on the HL7 Terminology server and is the value Vorro emits in CWE.14 when a downstream profile demands OID-bound coded values for location type.

HL7-defined vs user-defined

HL70260 is HL7-defined. The seven single-character codes are normative. Sites occasionally extend HL70260 with values like E (ER), I (ICU), or T (Telemetry), but those are non-conformant — ER is properly modeled as a Nursing Unit (N) with the unit identifier ER, and ICU is similarly a nursing unit. The kind/identifier separation is exactly why PL has both PL.1 (point of care) and PL.6 (type).

Version differences

• v2.3 — HL70260 introduced with the seven codes C, D, H, L, N, O, W.
• v2.4 – v2.6 — No changes; the set stayed at seven codes.
• v2.7 — PL.6 transitioned from IS to CWE, allowing OID metadata to accompany the HL70260 code.
• v2.8 – v2.8.1 — Set frozen at seven codes; no further additions.

The stability reflects the table's narrow purpose: classifying kinds of locations, not naming individual rooms.

Common mistakes

• Putting the location identifier in PL.6. PL.6 is the type code (one character); the identifier belongs in PL.1 (point of care), PL.4 (facility), PL.7 (building), PL.8 (floor), etc.
• Using L (Other Location) when the location is genuinely a clinic or ward. L is a last-resort code; downstream FHIR mapping cannot reconstruct meaning from L alone.
• Conflating N (Nursing Unit) with W (Ward). Modern profiles prefer N; W survives mainly for legacy sites. Pick one consistently across the facility.
• Sending lowercase (c, n). HL70260 codes are case-sensitive uppercase.
• Extending HL70260 with E for ER or I for ICU. Use N and disambiguate via the unit identifier in PL.1 instead.

Examples

A PV1 with an inpatient nursing-unit assignment:

PV1|1|I|2NORTH^210^A^MGH^^N^Main^2^Bed A||||||||||||||||V000123

The PL in PV1-3 carries 2NORTH (point of care), 210 (room), A (bed), facility MGH, type N (Nursing Unit), building Main, floor 2, bed description Bed A.

An outpatient clinic visit:

PV1|1|O|CARDCLIN^^^MGH^^C^Outpatient^1

Type C (Clinic) tells the receiver this is an ambulatory setting; downstream scheduling and billing apply outpatient rules.

A home-health encounter:

PV1|1|E|HOME^^^^^H

Translated to a FHIR Location snippet:

{
  "resourceType": "Location",
  "id": "2north-210-a",
  "name": "2NORTH 210 A",
  "physicalType": {
    "coding": [{
      "system": "http://terminology.hl7.org/CodeSystem/location-physical-type",
      "code": "bd",
      "display": "Bed"
    }]
  },
  "type": [{
    "coding": [{
      "system": "http://terminology.hl7.org/CodeSystem/v2-0260",
      "code": "N",
      "display": "Nursing Unit"
    }]
  }]
}

The HL70260 code rides on Location.type so the original v2 semantic is preserved; physicalType describes the bed-level granularity separately.

FHIR mapping

HL70260 maps loosely onto Location.physicalType (which has codes like si site, bu building, wi wing, wa ward, lvl level, ro room, bd bed, ho house, ve vehicle, area, jdn) and onto Location.type for service-mode classifications. The cleanest approach:

The HL70260 code itself should always be preserved as a Location.type Coding so that an outbound v2 channel can reconstruct PL.6 without ambiguity.

Engine considerations

• PL component count — PL has up to 12 components in v2.8.1. Engines must locate PL.6 by component index, not by counting non-empty components.
• Case sensitivity — HL70260 codes are case-sensitive uppercase. Normalize on ingest.
• CWE upgrade path — In v2.7+ profiles PL.6 may be CWE-shaped; engines must handle both IS and CWE forms.
• Disambiguation with PL.1 — HL70260 says what kind of location; PL.1 says which one. Engines that drop PL.6 force downstream consumers to guess from the identifier alone — avoid.
• Round-trip preservation — When mapping to Location.physicalType, also emit Location.type with the original HL70260 code so the round-trip back to v2 reconstructs PL.6 cleanly.

How Vorro handles HL70260

Vorro validates PL.6 across every PL-typed field (PV1-3, PV1-6, PV1-11, PV1-42, PV1-43, LOC-5) against the seven HL70260 codes on ingest. Values that match are forwarded to all downstream channels untouched. Locally extended codes (E, I, T) are routed to the terminology curation queue, where they are typically remapped to N (Nursing Unit) with the unit identifier carried in PL.1.

On outbound, Vorro emits HL70260 as IS for v2.5 and earlier profiles and as CWE with CWE.14 populated for v2.7+ destinations. When converting to FHIR Location, the HL70260 code is preserved on Location.type and Location.physicalType is populated with the closest physical-type concept, so downstream FHIR consumers can filter both by kind and by granularity.

Related pages

• PV1 segment — Patient Visit
• PL data type — Person Location
• HL70305 code table — Person Location Type (synonym)

Sources

• HL7 Terminology — CodeSystem v2-0260 Patient Location Type
• HL7 v2 product brief
• HL7 v2-to-FHIR Implementation Guide