HL7 v2 OBX-11 (Observation Result Status): Format, Values, and Testing Notes
Labs send preliminary results before a final one is verified, and sometimes correct a final result afterward — OBX-11 is the only field that tells a receiving system which of those states a given value is in, and systems that ignore it can display a preliminary or superseded result as if it were the confirmed one.
OBX-11 is the eleventh field of the HL7 v2 OBX segment — a coded status indicating the verification state of the result in OBX-5, such as preliminary, final, or corrected.
Valid code values
Example
F in OBX-11 marks this potassium result as final and verified. Synthetic result — not a real patient.
Where this trips people up
When a lab issues a corrected result, it typically resends the same observation identifier with OBX-11 set to C and a new value in OBX-5. Systems that key their result storage purely on the observation identifier and timestamp, without checking OBX-11, can end up storing the correction as a separate result alongside the original preliminary or final value instead of replacing it — leaving both the wrong and right values visible to a clinician with no clear indication which one is current.