The PDA (Patient Death and Autopsy) segment conveys the circumstances of a patient's death and any autopsy that followed. It records the cause or causes of death, where the death occurred, whether the death was certified and by whom, and the autopsy details: whether an autopsy was performed, when it started and ended, who performed it, and whether the coroner was involved.
PDA carries sensitive end-of-life data and is used in death-related patient-administration flows. It attaches to the patient already identified by PID and complements other patient-record segments such as DB1 when a full record is exchanged.
Purpose
The PDA segment exists to transmit structured death and autopsy facts within patient-administration messaging. Its responsibilities are:
- Record one or more causes of death via the repeating DB1 Death Cause Code field (PDA-1).
- Capture the location of death and whether the death was certified, with the certifier and certification timestamp.
- Indicate whether an autopsy was performed and capture its start/end window and the performing clinician.
- Flag coroner involvement.
This allows registration, medical-records, and registry systems to file death and autopsy data discretely rather than parsing narrative notes.
Used in
PDA carries patient death and autopsy data. It appears in patient-death-related ADT flows — for example a patient-death notification — where the segment travels alongside the demographic context in PID. Medical-records, mortality-registry, and vital-statistics integrations consume PDA to record cause of death, certification, and autopsy outcomes.
Field-by-field reference
Source: HAPI HL7v2 v2.5.1 javadocs (PDA.html). Lengths are shown as —; Required and Table # values are taken from the HL7 v2.5.1 standard where well-established. All PDA fields are optional.
| Seq | Name | Data Type | Length | Req | Repeat | Table # | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PDA-1 | Death Cause Code | ce | — | O | Y | — | One or more coded causes of death |
| PDA-2 | Death Location | pl | — | O | — | — | Location where the death occurred |
| PDA-3 | Death Certified Indicator | id | — | O | — | HL70136 | Indicates whether the death was certified |
| PDA-4 | Death Certificate Signed Date/Time | ts | — | O | — | — | Timestamp the death certificate was signed |
| PDA-5 | Death Certified By | xcn | — | O | — | — | Clinician who certified the death |
| PDA-6 | Autopsy Indicator | id | — | O | — | HL70136 | Indicates whether an autopsy was performed |
| PDA-7 | Autopsy Start and End Date/Time | dr | — | O | — | — | Autopsy start and end date/time range |
| PDA-8 | Autopsy Performed By | xcn | — | O | — | — | Clinician who performed the autopsy |
| PDA-9 | Coroner Indicator | id | — | O | — | HL70136 | Indicates whether the coroner was involved |
Most-used fields
- PDA-1 Death Cause Code — the central field; repeats to capture primary and contributing causes.
- PDA-2 Death Location — where the death occurred, important for registries and reporting.
- PDA-3 Death Certified Indicator — flags whether certification is complete.
- PDA-5 Death Certified By — identifies the certifying clinician for accountability.
- PDA-6 Autopsy Indicator — drives whether autopsy fields (PDA-7, PDA-8) are expected.
PDA-9 Coroner Indicator is populated when the death is reportable to or handled by the coroner or medical examiner.
Version differences (2.3 to 2.8.2)
- 2.3: Death information was conveyed largely through PID death fields (date/time of death and death indicator) without a dedicated autopsy segment.
- 2.4: The PDA segment was introduced to carry discrete death and autopsy data — cause, location, certification, and autopsy details — separate from the basic PID death flags.
- 2.5 / 2.5.1: The nine-field structure shown here is in effect, including the repeating Death Cause Code and the DR-typed autopsy date range. This matches the HAPI v2.5.1 model.
- 2.6 through 2.8.2: The segment definition remains essentially stable. Underlying types may be refined, but PDA field count, ordering, and meaning are preserved. Confirm exact lengths and table bindings against the target system's conformance profile.
Common mistakes
- Treating PDA-1 as single-valued. Death Cause Code is a repeating CE field; capture all reported causes.
- Confusing PDA-4 (certificate signed timestamp) with the autopsy window in PDA-7. They are different events and different data types (TS vs DR).
- Populating autopsy fields (PDA-7, PDA-8) when PDA-6 Autopsy Indicator says no autopsy occurred.
- Duplicating the date/time of death from PID into PDA. PDA records cause, location, certification, and autopsy — not the basic death timestamp, which stays in PID.
- Sending PDA-7 as a single timestamp. It is a DR (date range) with both start and end components.
Examples
Minimal PDA — a single cause of death and the death location:
PDA|I21.9^Acute myocardial infarction^I10|^^^MERCY&Mercy General&L
Fully populated PDA — multiple causes, certification, and autopsy details:
PDA|I21.9^Acute myocardial infarction^I10~E11.9^Type 2 diabetes mellitus^I10|ICU^410^B^MERCY&Mercy General&L|Y|20260610081500|2271^Okafor^David^^^^MD|Y|20260611090000^20260611123000|7745^Santos^Lena^^^^MD|N
Annotated breakdown of the fully populated example:
PDA Segment ID (Patient Death and Autopsy)
I21.9^...~E11.9^... PDA-1 Death Cause Code (CE, repeating)
ICU^410^B^MERCY&Mercy General&L PDA-2 Death Location (PL)
Y PDA-3 Death Certified Indicator (ID)
20260610081500 PDA-4 Death Certificate Signed Date/Time (TS)
2271^Okafor^David^^^^MD PDA-5 Death Certified By (XCN)
Y PDA-6 Autopsy Indicator (ID)
20260611090000^20260611123000 PDA-7 Autopsy Start and End Date/Time (DR)
7745^Santos^Lena^^^^MD PDA-8 Autopsy Performed By (XCN)
N PDA-9 Coroner Indicator (ID)
In-context excerpt — PDA in a patient-death notification following PID:
MSH|^~&|ADT|MERCY|MORTALITY|REGISTRY|20260610090000||ADT^A03^ADT_A03|MSG00781|P|2.5.1
EVN|A03|20260610090000
PID|1||MRN556677^^^MERCY^MR||Alvarez^Renata^J||19840312|F|||||||||||||||||||||20260610081200|Y
PDA|I21.9^Acute myocardial infarction^I10|ICU^410^B^MERCY&Mercy General&L|Y|20260610081500|2271^Okafor^David^^^^MD
In-context excerpt — PDA with autopsy and coroner involvement in a death-update message:
MSH|^~&|ADT|MERCY|MORTALITY|REGISTRY|20260611130000||ADT^A08^ADT_A01|MSG00782|P|2.5.1
EVN|A08|20260611130000
PID|1||MRN556677^^^MERCY^MR||Alvarez^Renata^J||19840312|F
PDA|I21.9^Acute myocardial infarction^I10|ICU^410^B^MERCY&Mercy General&L|Y|20260610081500|2271^Okafor^David^^^^MD|Y|20260611090000^20260611123000|7745^Santos^Lena^^^^MD|Y
FHIR mapping
PDA is not mapped at the segment level. No segment-level ConceptMap is published in the v2-to-FHIR IG for PDA.
Conceptually, PDA aligns with Patient.deceased and an autopsy Observation in FHIR: the death indicators and certification fields correspond to Patient.deceased[x] and to an Observation or Composition for the death certificate, the cause codes (PDA-1) map to Condition or Observation cause-of-death resources, and the autopsy fields (PDA-6 through PDA-8) map to an autopsy Observation or Procedure with a performer and an effective period. Because no normalized field-level mapping is published, treat PDA-to-FHIR translation as an integration-specific design decision and validate against the receiving FHIR profile.
Engine considerations
- PDA-1 repeats. Engines must iterate the full Death Cause Code list and preserve order (primary cause first by convention).
- PDA-7 is a DR (date range) with start and end components. Do not flatten it to a single timestamp.
- PDA-5 and PDA-8 are XCN person fields. Map identifier, name, and degree components consistently with how the engine maps people in other segments.
- The three indicator fields (PDA-3, PDA-6, PDA-9) are table-bound yes/no flags. Validate against HL70136 and keep autopsy fields conditional on PDA-6.
- PDA carries sensitive end-of-life data. Engines should apply the same handling, logging, and access controls used for other protected demographic and clinical content.
How Vorro parses and produces PDA
When Vorro parses an inbound message containing PDA, it expands the repeating PDA-1 Death Cause Code list fully so every primary and contributing cause is retained, preserves the PDA-7 date range as distinct start and end components, and keeps the full component structure of the PL location and the XCN certifier and autopsy-performer fields. Indicator fields retain their coded values, and empty optional fields are preserved as empty rather than dropped.
When producing PDA, Vorro emits only the fields backed by mapped source data, writes each cause of death into a separate PDA-1 repetition, and emits autopsy fields only when PDA-6 Autopsy Indicator is affirmative. Timestamps and the autopsy date range are normalized to the configured precision, and indicator values are drawn from the integration's configured value sets to match the receiving system's tables. The result files cleanly against the PID context in a death-related ADT message.
