by: Lena Makaroun, @LenaKMakaroun Since 2010, the Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) has been reporting hospital quality measures for a number of common medical conditions. Intended to provide health care consumers (patients and their families) with information that may guide where they seek care, these measures have undergone multiple iterations in attempts to inch closer and closer to measuring true “quality”. Mortality, a measure as inherently basic as it is complex, has remained a core measure throughout the past decade, and is showing no signs of retreat. With both US hospitals and the patient populations they serve being hugely diverse, efforts to identify factors contributing to mortality statistics independent of the medical care delivered are important and ongoing. In a recent article in JAMA Internal Medicine this past January, Walkey et al. ask a probing question – are hospitals being penalized on mortality quality measures for valuing patient prefere