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In this AHA Stat Blog post, AHA General Counsel Melinda Hatton and others point out a number of flaws in a recent study on hospital consolidation and quality, and the way the news media covered it. Chief among the flaws is that the study’s conclusions “were informed by preconceived notions of what the authors thought the data should show, which was then undermined further by the arbitrary choices made in comparing hospitals,” they write. “Unfortunately, the media, once again, failed to closely examine the conclusions, in many instances exaggerating or misrepresenting the findings to manufacture attention-grabbing headlines.”