The line forms at the right

The problems of the Endoscopy Center of Southern Nevada don't need another full airing, here. To speed things up and maximize profits, the Shadow Lane medical clinic operated like a cattle call, cutting corners including basic sterile safeguards. Syringes and "single-dose" vials of anaesthetic were re-used.

The Las Vegas City Council revoked the outfit's business license on April 7, after five cases of hepatitis C were traced to the operation. (There have since been more.) The city also fined the operators $500,000.

City officials promised that money would be used for something directly related to the costs others have sustained in sorting out the clinic's massive malpractice.

Needless to say, the line formed on the right; the requests already exceed the funds on hand.

First, Nevada Health Centers, a nonprofit outfit that receives federal tax subsidies to provide medical services to the poor, came forward and asked for the entire $500,000 to pay for patient testing and a case manager to track patients who test positive for hepatitis. That request is backed by the Universal Medical Center and the Southern Nevada Health District.

Next came the Metropolitan Police Department, which seized more than 100,000 patient records from the clinic to assure their availability to investigators -- but now has to figure out what to do with them.

The department has more than 1,000 record requests pending, but has to search for them by hand. Some sense of the pace at which this is proceeding can be gathered by the fact the department has so far satisfied about 85 requests.

The cops would like $260,000 to fund a one-year contract with ChartOne, which has been hired to move the 2,000 boxes to a permanent location, organize them, create an index that would allow records to be located by patient name, birth date or Social Security number and, you know ... actually get the records to the people who need them, which in many cases means the patients themselves.

Finally, not to be outdone, though he has not named an actual dollar amount, Clark County District Attorney David Roger wants help adding an investigator, a legal secretary and two new prosecutors to handle litigation expected to flow from the case.

Since it's easy to see the $500,000 on hand isn't going to be enough to cover even this partial list of "needs," U.S. Sen. Harry Reid is seeking a $5.25 million federal allocation to cover blood tests and follow-up care for patients who are found to have been harmed by the endoscopy center's careless procedures.

While Sen. Reid probably had no choice but to seek such federal help -- any wise politician would want to inoculate himself (sorry) against charges of "being so uncaring as to stand by doing nothing" -- the fact is that justification for federal involvement here is minimal.

And while it may sound callous, the city would be foolish to use these limited funds in an attempt to make the patients whole for their inconvenience and any necessary treatment. The money simply won't stretch far enough, and the proper course for victims to seek such restitution is through the courts and civil litigation -- a breach into which the barristers of our local bar do not seem at all reluctant to hurl themselves.

Therefore, the answer to this "not enough to go around" question is that the $500,000 from the fine should be used to cover taxpayers' costs of investigating and prosecuting the perpetrators: The money should go to the police and the district attorney.