It’s actually not surprising that hospitals were slow to adopt new systems in 2009, given the horrible economic conditions, difficulty of raising money for capital investments and uncertainty over what the final government requirements would be. “I’d be shocked if we didn’t see an uptick in 2010 and an even bigger one in 2011,” Jha tells the Health Blog. “But are we going from 2% to 40%? No. We might go from 2% to 5% [in 2010] to 15% or 20% in 2011.”

U.S. News & World Report’s annual Best Hospitals rankings are out today, and we asked Avery Comarow, the magazine’s health rankings editor, whether the rankings will ever incorporate meaningful use benchmarks or other indicators of IT adoption. In an email, he says that “it’s safe to say that meaningful use of HIT will be folded into the Best Hospitals methodology at some point — provided that a link between such a measure and clinical quality can be established.”

In a separate regulatory filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission Tuesday, the company said its top two executives took home $22.4 million in cash apiece last year. Henry R. Kravis and George R. Roberts, founders of the private-equity company, generated total compensation of $70.5 million each in 2009, the majority of which was in non-cash stock awards, according to the filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The $70.5 million figure doesn't include the cash they earned. Each owns a 13% stake in the company, according to the filing.

Reagan had the good fortune to take office at the tail end of a 16 year secular bear market, just as Paul Volcker fed the economy its distasteful medicine. Inflation was broken, and interest rates began their 25 year slide towards zero. To ignore the reality of these factors, and credit tax cuts as the sole cause of the 1980s and 90s expansion is simply to discard reality because it does not fit your neat ideological universe. That is a surefire recipe for losing money as an investor . . .

The average work week increased to 34 hours from 33.9, a positive sign. Most employers are likely to work current employees longer before they hire new workers. The department also revised January's job total to show a gain of 14,000, up from a previously reported loss of 26,000. February's job numbers were also revised higher by 22,000 to show a loss of 14,000. The economy has now added jobs in three separate months since the recession began.

Say what you want, but this appears to be a change in policy from doing nothing to tightening. At the very minimum this is likely to change perceptions about the resolve of the Fed's willingness to take its exit strategy seriously.

"Only companies that are insulated from the economy or those with established brands, strong fundamentals and balance sheets will succeed," in wooing investors, says Michael A. Bauer, a managing director at Jefferies Group.