HL7 PV1 Segment: Patient Visit

The PV1 segment describes the visit (the encounter): patient class, assigned location, the providers attending the patient, the hospital service, and the admit and discharge timestamps. It is the heart of an ADT message - where PID says who the patient is, PV1 says where they are, what kind of visit this is, and who is caring for them. Most ADT routing and bed-management logic reads PV1.

Purpose

PV1 carries the administrative and location context of a single patient visit: class (inpatient, outpatient, emergency), assigned and prior locations, attending/referring/consulting/admitting doctors, hospital service, visit number, and the admit/discharge times. Fields are populated differently per trigger event - an admit fills the admit fields a discharge later completes.

Used in

PV1 appears in nearly every visit-scoped message: ADT (all admit, transfer, discharge, and update events), and is also carried in scheduling (SIU), order (ORM), result (ORU), and financial (DFT, BAR) messages that need the visit context. See ADT, ORM, and ORU.

Field-by-field reference

Source: the Vorro HL7 segment database (extracted from the official v2-to-FHIR IG). R = required (cardinality min ≥ 1). Repeat = field may repeat. Length is not carried by the FHIR source and is shown as -.

Most-used fields

• PV1-2 Patient Class is the only required field and the one most logic branches on - inpatient vs outpatient vs emergency changes how the encounter is treated everywhere downstream.
• PV1-3 Assigned Patient Location is the bed-board source of truth: point-of-care^room^bed^facility. Transfers (ADT^A02) update it.
• PV1-19 Visit Number is the encounter identifier most systems match on to tie orders, results, and charges to the right visit.
• PV1-7 Attending Doctor and PV1-17 Admitting Doctor drive care-team and notification logic.
• PV1-44 Admit Date/Time and PV1-45 Discharge Date/Time bound the encounter period and order events when delivery is out of order.

Version differences (2.3 to 2.8.2)

• 2.3/2.4: PV1-50 Alternate Visit ID and PV1-51 Visit Indicator added.
• 2.5: coded fields move from CE toward CWE; PV1-20 Financial Class data type (FC) clarified.
• 2.7+: PV1-52 Other Healthcare Provider, PV1-53/54 Service Episode Description/Identifier added.
• Receivers built for 2.3 ignore the trailing fields they do not recognize.

Common mistakes

• Treating PV1-3 as free text instead of a structured PL and losing room/bed components.
• Matching on patient identity (PID-3) but ignoring PV1-19 Visit Number, so results land on the wrong encounter.
• Assuming PV1-44/45 are always present - an admit may omit the discharge time that a later A03 supplies.
• Reading only the first repetition of PV1-7/PV1-17 when several providers are listed.

Examples

Minimal valid PV1 (only the required class):

PV1|1|I

Fully-populated PV1 (inpatient admit):

PV1|1|I|3WEST^301^A^MERCYGEN||||1234^SMITH^JANE^A^^^MD|||MED||||ADM|A0|||1234^SMITH^JANE^A^^^MD|S|V0001^^^MERCYGEN|A|||||||||||||||||||MERCYGEN|||||20260609120000

Annotated breakdown of the fully-populated example (selected fields):

PV1                              ← segment ID
1                                ← PV1-1  Set ID
I                                ← PV1-2  Patient Class (Inpatient)
3WEST^301^A^MERCYGEN             ← PV1-3  Assigned Location (unit^room^bed^facility)
1234^SMITH^JANE^A^^^MD           ← PV1-7  Attending Doctor
MED                              ← PV1-10 Hospital Service
ADM                              ← PV1-14 Admit Source
1234^SMITH^JANE^A^^^MD           ← PV1-17 Admitting Doctor
V0001^^^MERCYGEN                 ← PV1-19 Visit Number
20260609120000                  ← PV1-44 Admit Date/Time

In-context inside an ADT^A01 (admit):

MSH|^~&|REG|MERCYGEN|EHR|MERCYGEN|20260609120000||ADT^A01^ADT_A01|MSG001|P|2.5.1
EVN|A01|20260609120000
PID|1||MR12345^^^MERCYGEN^MR||DOE^JOHN^Q||19800101|M
PV1|1|I|3WEST^301^A||||1234^SMITH^JANE^A^^^MD|||MED||||ADM|||||V0001|||||||||||||||||||||||20260609120000

In-context inside an ADT^A03 (discharge, discharge fields now set):

MSH|^~&|REG|MERCYGEN|EHR|MERCYGEN|20260612080000||ADT^A03^ADT_A03|MSG045|P|2.5.1
EVN|A03|20260612080000
PID|1||MR12345^^^MERCYGEN^MR||DOE^JOHN^Q||19800101|M
PV1|1|I|3WEST^301^A||||1234^SMITH^JANE^A^^^MD|||MED|||||||||V0001|||||||||||||||01^Home||||||||||||20260609120000|20260612080000

FHIR mapping

Primary target resource: Encounter. PV1 also contributes to Coverage (PV1-20), Patient (PV1-16 VIP indicator extension), and a Basic EncounterHistory resource. Official ConceptMaps: Encounter, Coverage, Patient, Basic-EncounterHistory.

Key Encounter mappings:

Other targets: PV1-20 Financial Class → Coverage.type; PV1-16 VIP Indicator → Patient patient-importance extension. Fields without a published mapping (PV1-21 through PV1-35, PV1-46 through PV1-49) are financial/account details not represented on Encounter.

Engine considerations

• Required in practice: PV1-2 is the only standard-required field, but real interfaces also require PV1-19 (visit number) and the relevant location/provider fields for routing.
• Parse PV1-3 and PV1-6/PV1-11/PV1-42/PV1-43 as structured PL so unit, room, bed, and facility survive.
• Sequence events by PV1-44 (and EVN-2) rather than arrival order - an A02 transfer can arrive before its A01.
• Repeating provider fields (PV1-7/8/9/17/52) must be preserved as arrays.

How Vorro parses and produces PV1

Vorro maps PV1-2 to the encounter class/status pair and indexes PV1-19 as the visit key so orders and results attach to the correct encounter. Location fields are decomposed to their PL components for bed-board feeds, repeating provider fields are preserved, and on the FHIR side Vorro emits Encounter with participants typed per the official ConceptMap (ATND, REF, CON, ADM).

Related pages

• PID - the patient the visit belongs to.
• PV2 - additional visit information that complements PV1.
• ADT messages - where PV1 drives admit, transfer, and discharge.

Sources

• HL7 v2-to-FHIR IG - segment maps index
• HL7 v2-to-FHIR IG - PV1 to Encounter ConceptMap
• HL7 Version 2.5.1 product brief