Cause Of Death

Definition: This field identifies the coded cause of death. May be repeated as necessary to list multiple contributing causes. A text description can be included by including text but no code or coding system. For example, if the cause of death is to be determined at autopsy but results are not yet available, the cause of death element could be ^Pending autopsy^. The date/time of death can be sent in the PID and the autopsy results sent in the event description from autopsy element of the PEO segment.