Has using mortality as a quality indicator for hospitals died?

BMJ editorial confirms that academic opinion is finally coming round to accepting that Hospital Standardised Mortality Ratios (HSMRs) are not a useful signal of whether something is going wrong in hospital care (see previous post). A linked article did not find a significant association between HSMR and avoidable deaths. Even measuring avoidable deaths is open to interpretation and not an exact science. As a rapid response says, "Monitoring hospital quality by means of HSMR and other mortality indicators has failed to benefit any one except Dr Foster" (see previous post).