Vendor executives are also confident they'll have the bench strength to handle surging demand. “We're presently about 60 to 70 percent staffed for the demand, as far as we can tell,” says Mauraan Schultz, director of CPT upgrades at Alpharetta, Ga.-based McKesson Corporation. “We've been pulling the reins in and making sure we're careful about what we're committing to, so as not cause all sorts of downstream problems.”

At the Malvern, Pa.-based Siemens Medical Solutions, Angela Nicholas, M.D., senior director in product management, says the company is actively hiring CPOE experts to fulfill the anticipated demand for stimulus-focused implementation help. Nicholas, a former community hospital CMIO, says the industry will have problems “staying staffed up.” She says as they are lured from one sector of the industry to another, some people will go back and forth between provider and vendor sides. So, in addition to actively hiring (including hiring from hospital organizations). Siemens is trying to simplify that work itself. “We've shortened and adjusted our methodology at Siemens,” she says. “We're in beta with the methodology, but we believe we'll cut the implementation down to somewhere around five months for CPOE, maybe even less.”

Kansas City, Mo.-based Cerner Corporation has adopted a similar approach in which Michael Valentine, executive vice president of Worldwide Client Organization, says he and his colleagues are creating a templated approach to CPOE implementation that should significantly shorten the typical rollout. “We do most of the build and design of our solution in a centralized fashion at our solutions center in Kansas City,” he says, “and we limit the impact on clients by essentially making it a process of three to five trips to Kansas City. We've been trying to accelerate the process for them.”

Inevitably, though, one of the keys to success in this area, including ensuring one has the right people in place, is to get started now, says Erica Drazen, partner in the Waltham, Mass.-based Emerging Practices Group of Falls Church, Va.-based CSC. “Many, many people are waiting for some final word before they get going; though I don't think the word is going to get any more final,” she says. Moving forward is vital, and Drazen says waiting will risk one's ability to engage top-tier consulting firms and vendor implementation specialists. And though it is possible to create “no-poaching” understandings with consulting firms and vendors, the complexity and fluidity of the situation tend to preclude rigid contract language.