Doctors find a modem of success.

• Position: David Forsberg and Skip Sallee of Teleradiology Associates Inc.

David Forsberg and Skip Sallee call themselves teleradiologists, but just think of them as doctors for hire by wire.

Most of their 43 client hospitals (seven in North Carolina) can't afford a big staff of radiologists, so Drs. Forsberg and Sallee, both 32, have combined high-tech equipment with low-touch medicine for long-distance diagnosis.

Granted, large hospitals and radiology practices have been faxing and modeming X-rays and other images for 10 years now, Sallee says. "But nobody else is doing pure teleradiology and nothing else on a national scope."

Sixty-bed Brunswick Hospital in Supply is a typical client. "If we send them eight CT scans, which is actually a pretty high number, the total cost is still less expensive than hiring a radiologist for the weekend," says Michael McCullough, a radiologist there. Still, equipment to digitize and send images can cost a hospital as much as $40,000. So 3-year-old Durham-based Teleradiology Associates Inc. accepts X-rays by overnight mail from 10 clients who can't afford computers.

Sallee, a native of Ava, Mo., says the idea came to him at a 1987 American Medical Association session on rural health care. Sallee explained it to Forsberg, a fellow resident at Duke University Medical Center. With the help of Caroline Chiles, a...