It can’t get much worse, can it?

The reputation of medical care in Las Vegas has fallen and smacked its head. It's in the ICU. I don't expect it to recover.

I say that with great sadness. This is my community, and I care about her deeply. But for decades, Las Vegans have believed that if you wanted quality medical care, you needed to go to Scripps in Southern California, the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale or some other community with a national medical reputation. You stayed in Las Vegas only if you were financially stuck or it was an emergency.

Now, let me be clear. I think this attitude stinks. My family doctor (Eun-Mi Park) and my heart doctor (Thomas Lambert) are as good as they get. If I lived in Los Angeles, I'd come to Las Vegas to see them. I suspect many Las Vegans feel the same about the doctors they personally know.

But let's not kid ourselves. The idea that Las Vegas is a Third World country when it comes to medical care remains a prevailing attitude, and it has taken years of growth in both population and medical sophistication for that attitude to evolve for the better.

For the past several years, I thought we as a community were making strides in turning around the bad rep of Las Vegas medicine. New hospitals and equipment certainly helped. Damn good young doctors in all disciplines were choosing to make Las Vegas home. Political, civic and business leaders increasingly set a positive example and elected to receive medical treatment here instead of elsewhere.

Then along comes the Endoscopy Center of Southern Nevada. The Southern Nevada Health District issued a health alert to 40,000 people who received treatment at the now-infamous facility over the span of a few years.

Officials said that since 2004 staff there engaged in practices which might have spread infectious diseases such as hepatitis C and HIV. Shockingly, they were said to have re-used syringes and medicine vials that subsequently caused a health crisis we are only now beginning to understand.

I don't know whether all the charges against the center are true. It's hard to believe such practices, which violate basic medical common sense, could go on for any length of time without someone blowing the whistle. I can tell you that if a pencil-pushing doctor told any of the nurses I personally know to reuse a syringe, the next thing that doctor would feel would be that dirty syringe in his thigh.

What I do know is that no matter how the Endoscopy Center of Southern Nevada saga plays out, it's going to be a long time before the Las Vegas community gets back to feeling good about health care here.

It's unfair. But it's the truth.

Real estate bottom?

This from a developer I trust: February in Las Vegas saw real estate agents receive multiple offers on many properties for sale. Don't know if this signals a bottom in the market quite yet, but I do know this: Las Vegas real estate is steeply discounted, and money is cheap. You can deride this tip because of the source, if you like, but six months from now, don't ask me how you missed out on the best time to buy real estate in Las Vegas since the beginning of this decade.

Sherman Frederick is publisher of the Las Vegas Review-Journal and president of Stephens Media. Readers may write him at sfrederick@ reviewjournal.com.