HL7 v2 DG1-6 Field Guide: Diagnosis Type Values and Common Mistakes
DG1-6 only ever holds one of three letters, which makes it feel trivial — right up until a claims system treats a "working" diagnosis as final and bills off a code that was never confirmed.
DG1-6 classifies what stage of the diagnostic process a given DG1 repetition represents: an admitting diagnosis recorded at intake, a working diagnosis used during the course of care, or a final diagnosis confirmed at discharge. A single patient stay can legitimately produce multiple DG1 segments with different type values as the clinical picture evolves.
Valid code values
Example
DG1-6 set to F, marking this diagnosis as final rather than admitting or working.
Where this trips people up
Some receiving systems treat every DG1 as equally authoritative regardless of DG1-6, which means a working diagnosis entered on admission day can end up on a claim as if it were final, or a later final diagnosis never overwrites an earlier admitting one in a downstream dashboard. Build test scenarios where a patient's diagnosis type changes across the stay — admitting on the first DG1, working on a middle one, final on the last — and confirm your system actually treats the final type as authoritative for billing while preserving the earlier ones for the clinical history.