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By SANGEETA SHASTRY The Kansas City Star
By SANGEETA SHASTRY The Kansas City Star
Updated: 2012-06-15T04:00:17Z
The University of Kansas is seeking $30 million in state funds to help pay for a new medical education building on its Kansas City medical school campus.
To reach Sangeeta Shastry, call 816-234-4690 or email sshastry@kcstar.com.
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KU looking for $30 million from state toward $75 med school building
The dream of IIT Kharagpur to start a medical college is set to become reality, with the institute receiving a central grant of Rs 230 crore for a 400-bedded super-speciality hospital.
The hospital, which will be part of Dr Bidhan Chandra Roy Institute of Medical Science and Research, is likely to be functional in two years. Institute sources said the number of beds would later be increased to 750.
Once the hospital starts functioning, the institute will offer MBBS, MD, MS and DM courses, all approved by the Medical Council of India. Officials said the teaching module at the medical college, which will have a tie-up with the University of California, San Diego, and Johns Hopkins University, will comprise elements of modelling, simulation and virtual reality to produce tech-savvy doctors.
The IIT, set to be the first among the 15 such ace engineering institutions in the country to start a medical college, now provides indoor and outdoor medical facilities for common ailments at BC Roy Technology Hospital, located at the heart of the campus.
Critical patients are referred to Kharagpur Sub-divisional Hospital or South-Eastern Railway General Hospital, around 2km from the campus.
The IIT now runs School of Medical Science and Technology that provides a platform for interdisciplinary teaching and research in medical science and technology. The school offers a three-year masters programme in medical science and technology for doctors, again a first of its kind in the country.
IIT officials said Dr Bidhan Chandra Roy Institute of Medical Science and Research, the foundation stone for which was laid in 2007 by then President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, would bring the diverse disciplines of engineering and medicine together and focus on biomedical, clinical and translational research. Drug design and delivery will be another thrust area.
In the first phase, the institute, which will focus more on postgraduate than undergraduate study, will have a bio-innovation centre, which will be a hub of research in biomedical engineering and remote healthcare delivery, and a healthcare outreach unit.
The unit will extend healthcare to remote, under-served areas through remote diagnostic, telepathology, teleradiology and other diagnostic tools compatible with the cellular network. A series of small healthcare kiosks manned by paramedics will be linked to the outreach unit, said an official.
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The Commonwealth Medical College moved a step closer to full accreditation on Thursday when it announced the national medical school accrediting body has lifted the college's probationary status and granted it provisional accreditation.
The advance comes a year after the Liaison Committee for Medical Education placed the school on probation largely because of concerns about its financial stability.
With the new status - a rung higher than the school's preliminary accreditation before the probation period - the accrediting body also determined that the college has the resources to expand its class size from 65 to 100 medical degree students beginning in 2013.
"This is an external statement by an accrediting body that this school is solid," Lois Margaret Nora, M.D., the college's interim president and dean, said. "For anyone who has any questions about permanence, this is just a major statement."
The LCME's deliberations are private, Dr. Nora said, but the committee performed a comprehensive review of databases, student surveys and the college's self-study and spent three days on site evaluating the school.
The committee has asked for a status report in February 2013 on two areas that require continued monitoring: the college's permanent leadership and its long-term financial stability. But Dr. Nora noted that it did not ask for follow-up reports on the strength of the teaching and student programs at the core of the school's mission.
"This is a very solid school from the perspective of its core business: growing physicians and other health professionals," she said.
Dr. Nora, who will be replaced by Robert Wright, M.D. as interim president and dean when she leaves the college at the end of June, said the school has largely addressed the leadership question by permanently filling several key chairman and dean positions that were previously vacant or temporary.
The college has identified "excellent" candidates in its national search for a permanent CEO and dean and will hold a second round of interviews before the end of the month, Dr. Wright said.
A new dean is expected to be named in late summer or fall.
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By Leonard Sparks
Published: 2:00 AM - 06/14/12
LIBERTY The Liberty school board approved a new contract with the district's teachers union on Tuesday, ending years of negotiations that began when the last contract expired in June 2009.
The agreement, which covers July 1, 2009, through June, 30, 2016, calls for annual 1.5 percent salary increases and larger health insurance contributions, and creates a new retirement-incentive plan.
"I think it's fair," said Superintendent Mike Vanyo. "I wish we didn't have to wait three years to get here."
Teachers will begin receiving annual increases in the fall. They will also up their share of health insurance premiums to 10 percent from 5 percent. The contribution will rise to 12 percent beginning July 1, 2015.
Those retiring under the incentive program would be eligible to have 85 percent of their individual health-insurance plan or 75 percent of their family plan covered by the district.
The district and union officials came to terms after a bargaining session on May 24 that went until 2 a.m. About 93 percent of LFA members approved the terms, said union President Tim Hamblin. "There was just give and take on every issue on salaries, on benefits," Hamblin said.
Liberty is also nearing an agreement with the union that represents its administrators, Vanyo said. It is also hoping to come to terms with its aides and custodial workers, he added.
"My hope is that we get back to the table with them very soon," he said.
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MALVERN, Pa., June 14, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --Liberty Property Trust (LRY) today announced that its board of trustees has declared a cash dividend of $0.475 per share on the company's common shares of beneficial interest for the second quarter of 2012. The dividend will be payable on July 13, 2012 to shareholders of record on June 29, 2012.
About the Company
Liberty Property Trust (LRY) is a leader in commercial real estate, serving customers in the United States and United Kingdom, through the development, acquisition, ownership and management of superior office and industrial properties. Liberty's 77 million square foot portfolio includes 650 properties providing office, distribution and light manufacturing facilities to 1,700 tenants.
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Liberty Property Trust Announces Second Quarter 2012 Dividend
VIRGINIA BEACH, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--
JTH Holding, Inc. (LTAXA.OB) the parent company of Liberty Tax Service, today announced that executives John T. Hewitt, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, and Mark F. Baumgartner, Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, are expected to present at the Jefferies Global Consumer Conference in Nantucket, MA, on Wednesday, June 20, 2012 at approximately 10:30am EDT.
The presentation will be available via the Investor Relations section of the Companys website, http://www.libertytax.com.
About JTH Holding, Inc.
JTH Holding, Inc. is the parent company of Liberty Tax Service. Liberty Tax Service is the fastest-growing retail tax preparation company in the industrys history. Founded in 1997 by CEO John T. Hewitt, a pioneer in the tax industry, Liberty Tax Service has prepared over 10 million individual income tax returns. With 43 years of tax industry experience, Hewitt stands as the most experienced CEO in the tax preparation business, having also founded Jackson Hewitt Tax Service. Liberty Tax Service is the only tax franchise on the recently released Forbes Top 20 Franchises for the Buck.
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Liberty Tax Service to Present at the Jefferies Global Consumer Conference
Thanks to venture capitalistFred Wilson, a backer of hip tech companies like Twitter and Tumblr, there's a new catch phrase to describe Silicon Valley politics: "Obamacare scares me."That's what Wilson wrote in this post, "The Far Center Party," where he discusses his inability to fit in with our current political parties and praised New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. "I am socially liberal. I was thrilled when Obama recognized a gay couple's right to marriage. I am fiscally conservative. Obamacare scares me," he writes. "I am not really comfortable in any political party." His comment has had quite the polarizing effect on Twitter, eliciting mocking responses like this from New York Times developer Matt Langer. "LOL @ Every Single Word Of This," he tweeted. But, there's a good amount of people hear-hearing Wilson. "Agree 100% with @fredwilson. The Far Center Party," tweeted Darren Herman, a Silicon Valley ad guy, demonstrating the tech world's particular breed of libertarianism.
Wilson has a lot of money, so it makes sense that he calls himself a fiscal conservative. But the Obamacare comment reveals a more complex version of libertarianism, embodied by PayPal founder and Silicon Valley investor extraordinaire Peter Thiel -- a "libertarian futurism" as George Packer described it in The New Yorker. Packer highlights the following quote from Thiel's essay 'The Education of a Libertarian,' which sums up the contradictory position of these Silicon Valley libertarians.
In our time, the great task for libertarians is to find an escape from politics in all its formsfrom the totalitarian and fundamentalist catastrophes to the unthinking demos that guides so-called social democracy. . . . We are in a deadly race between politics and technology. . . . The fate of our world may depend on the effort of a single person who builds or propagates the machinery of freedom that makes the world safe for capitalism.
Like Thiel, Wilson calls for an escape. "Our country is hostage to the two political parties who control our electoral process. Those of us in the Far Center Party should figure out how to change that," he writes. Though he doesn't call for a complete removal from American politics, like Thiel he believes American politics have failed. Thiel traces that failure back to 1920 -- the beginning of the American welfare state. He continues:
The 1920s were the last decade in American history during which one could be genuinely optimistic about politics. Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to womentwo constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarianshave rendered the notion of capitalist democracy into an oxymoron.
Although it doesn't come off quite as offensive, Wilson is having this same realization with Obamacare, also a "vast increase in welfare beneficiaries." Obamacare is the marriage of his opposing liberal and conservative political values, to him, an oxymoron.
The rich of Silicon Valley have found themselves in a political predicament: They want to make the world a better (more progressive) place, but they think technology (a.k.a their businesses) should be the ones to do it -- not government. That doesn't fit well with the current political structure, neither the social nor economic policies. Politics is broken, they say, so let's abstain. Although it might sound like a particularly depressing political theory -- This isn't working, let's just ignore it -- Thiel hasn't lost all hope, he explains to Packer.
I actually think it is a big step just to ask the question What does one need to do to make the U.S. a better place? Thats where Im weirdly hopeful, in spite of the fact that a lot of things arent going perfectly these days. There is a very cathartic crisis thats gone on, and its not clear where its going to go. But at least everyone knows things are rotten. Were in a much better place than when things were rotten and everyone thought things were great.
Want to add to this story? Let us know in comments or send an email to the author at rgreenfield at theatlantic dot com. You can share ideas for stories on the Open Wire.
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In a segment Tuesday on CNN’s ‘Starting Point’ with Christine Romans, former wrestler and governor Jesse Ventura urged voters to consider Libertarian Presidential Candidate Gary Johnson — but CNN edited that piece of the interview out of the internet coverage of the story.
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Jesse Ventura wants you to vote for Gary Johnson; CNN edits it out
SAN ANGELO, Texas The Libertarian Party of Tom Green County will have a meeting at 6 p.m. Monday at Hidalgo's West, 3108 Sherwood Way.
Local delegates to the recent Texas Libertarian Party State Convention will share the latest news from the Texas Libertarian Party.
For more information, call 325-650-2738.
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Falkland Islands Holdings plans to raise up to 10m to prepare for a potential oil boom in the South Atlantic.
The Aim-listed company owns 70 acres of land in the Greater Port Stanley area, which it plans to develop into warehouses or accommodation. The mini-conglomerate already owns logistics, warehouses and retail outlets on the islands. Yesterdays announcement came on the 30th anniversary of the liberation of the Falkland Islands from Argentine occupation.
We are excited by the opportunity to develop the groups existing assets in the Falkland Islands in anticipation of the growth in the economy, which the board believes will follow from recent hydrocarbon discoveries, said Brian Hudd, chairman.
A number of UK-listed oil companies have been exploring the waters around the Falkland Islands, including Falkland Oil & Gas (LSE: FOGL.L - news) , Borders & Southern, Rockhopper, Desire Petroleum (LSE: DES.L - news) and Argos Resources (LSE: ARG.L - news) .
The prospect of a commercial oil business in the region has led to a campaign by Argentine president Cristina Kirchner to try to gain sovereignty over the Falklands, including legal threats to the oil companies currently operating in the region.
The Falkland Islands government will receive a production royalty of 9pc of oil production and corporation tax on profits which together will amount to several billion dollars in respect of the [Rockhopper discovery] Sea Lion project alone, Falkland Islands Holdings said.
Elsewhere in the oil sector, Royal Dutch Shell has extended its offer to buy East African group Cove Energy (Berlin: LPC.BE - news) , but it did not raise its offer to match a competing bid. Cove shareholders now have until June 27 to agree to Shells offer of 220p. Last month Thailands PTT trumped Shell (LSE: RDSB.L - news) and offered 240p a share for Cove, valuing it at 1.22bn.
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Falkland Islands Holdings to raise £10m to invest in oil boom
LONDON (ShareCast) - Falkland Islands Holdings, the AIM quoted international services group, has raised eight million pounds following a subscription for shares by Blackfish Capital, an investment fund. In addition, the company is making an open offer under which the company's existing shareholder can buy one open offer share for every 15 ordinary shares they own, with the aim of raising a further 2.0m. The open shares will sold at 320p each, the same price as which Black Capital subscribed. All of the company's directors are participating and excess application will be accommodated to maximise participation in the offer. The proceeds will be used to exploit what it believes are "significant opportunities" that exist following recent hydrocarbon discoveries, as well as developing and expanding its existign business interests on the Falkland Islands. Falklands emphasised that Blackfish Capital Management is supportive of providing further project related equity and debt-finance either directly or via its extended client network. Chairman David Hudd said: "We are excited by the opportunity to develop the group's existing assets in the Falkland Islands in anticipation of the growth in the economy, which the board believes will follow from recent hydrocarbon discoveries. Given the company's history in the Falkland Islands and our leading position, we are confident that further investment now, will generate attractive returns. "We are delighted to have a supportive keystone investor in Blackfish Capital and we believe that further investment now in the Falkland Islands is in the best interest of our shareholders to enable the Company to participate in what we believe could be an explosive period of growth." The share price fell 5.59% to 337.50p by 13:13. NR
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PORT STANLEY, Falkland Islands, June 14 (UPI) -- The Falklands Islands Thursday celebrated the 30th anniversary of the end of the Falklands War between Britain and Argentina.
A service of thanksgiving marked the occasion, held at Christ Church Cathedral in Port Stanley, followed by a military parade to the Liberation Monument led by veterans of the 1982 conflict, the BBC reported.
Prime Minister David Cameron expressed Britain's support for the islands, which had "not wavered in the last 30 years and it will not in the years ahead."
The Falklands government announced it would hold a referendum on its political status, emphasizing islanders wanted to remain British.
Britain liberated the islands June 14, 1982, after 74 days of Argentine occupation. About 225 British servicemen, three Falklands civilians and 650 Argentines were killed in the armed conflict that ensued after Argentina invaded in an attempt to reclaim the islands.
Despite the defeat, Argentina still claims sovereignty over the islands.
Britain has laid claim to the Falklands since the Royal Navy expelled Argentina in 1833 when it re-established its status as a U.K. territory.
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Britain's premier vowed Thursday to defend the Falklands from Argentinian "aggressive threats" as the 30th anniversary of the end of the war over the islands was marked in London and Port Stanley.
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BRUSSELS, June 14 (UPI) -- European geneticists have condemned the use of genetic testing by a Hungarian politician intended to establish his "racial purity."
The European Society of Human Genetics, which promotes research in basic and applied human and medical genetics, said the use by a member of Parliament from the Hungarian far-right Jobbik Party of a genetic test to attempt to prove his "ethnic purity" was ethically unacceptable.
"This is a gross distortion of the values of genetic testing, which is intended to be used to diagnose disease rather than to claim racial purity," Joerg Schmidtke, president of ESHG, said in a release from the society.
Hungarian company Nagy Gen scanned 18 positions in the MP's genome for variants it said were characteristic of Roma and Jewish ethnic groups and concluded Roma and Jewish ancestry could be ruled out.
"The test proves nothing," Schmidtke said. "It is impossible to deduce someone's origins from testing so few places in the genome.
"I am sure that clinical geneticists worldwide will join me in condemning this scandalous abuse of a technology that was developed to help the sick, rather than to promote hatred."
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Newswise Bethesda, MDJune 14, 2012 Listed below are the selected highlights for the June 2012 issue of the Genetics Society of Americas journal, GENETICS. The June issue is available online at http://www.genetics.org/content/current. Please credit GENETICS, Vol. 191, JUNE 2012, Copyright 2012.
Please feel free to forward to colleagues who may be interested in these articles.
ISSUE HIGHLIGHTS
APL-1, the Alzheimers amyloid precursor protein in Caenorhabditis elegans, modulates multiple metabolic pathways throughout development, pp. 493507 Collin Y. Ewald, Daniel A. Raps, and Chris Li A hallmark of Alzheimers disease is the deposition of senile plaques, whose major component is the beta-amyloid peptide, which is a cleavage product of the amyloid precursor protein (APP). The function of APP and its cleavage products is still unclear. This article reports that the Caenorhabditis elegans APP-related protein APL-1 has multiple functions during development, including modulating the insulin pathway.
Population genetics models of local ancestry, pp. 607619 Simon Gravel Genomes are mosaics of chromosomal tracts that originate from a finite number of ancestors. These mosaics, which are shaped by historical migration patterns, are key to understanding genomic diversity in complex populations. This article presents gene flow models for inferring migration history using such patterns. When applied to HapMap African-American (ASW) data, a two-epoch migration model agrees with the data better than the commonly used single-migration model.
Synaptic polarity depends on phosphatidylinositol signaling regulated by myo-inositol monophosphatase in Caenorhabditis elegans, pp. 509521 Tsubasa Kimata, Yoshinori Tanizawa, Yoko Can, Shingo Ikeda,Atsushi Kuhara, and Ikue Mori Lithium relieves bipolar disorder by inhibiting the evolutionarily conserved enzyme myo-inositol monophosphatase (IMPase), which is essential for polarized localization of synaptic molecules. These authors show that mutations in two enzymes that degrade membrane phosphatidylinositol 4,5-bisphosphate (PIP2) suppress the synaptic defects of IMPase mutants and confer resistance to lithium treatment. These results provide the first in vivo evidence that lithium impairs neuronal PIP2 synthesis through inhibition of IMPase.
Analysis of Cryptococcus neoformans sexual development reveals rewiring of the pheromone-response network by a change in transcription factor identity, pp. 435449 Emilia K. Kruzel, Steven S. Giles, and Christina M. Hull Gene regulatory networks evolve, sometimes radically. This article describes the pheromone response network of the human pathogen Cryptococcus neoformans. The authors map transcriptional regulatory changes that occur during sexual development leading to the discovery of a key cis-regulatory element and its binding protein. The resulting regulatory architecture could not have been predicted based on comparative sequence analyses.
A non-Mendelian MAPK-generated hereditary unit controlled by a second MAPK pathway in Podospora anserina, pp. 419433 Herv Lalucque, Fabienne Malagnac, Sylvain Brun, Sbastien Kicka,and Philippe Silar There are many ways to produce a prion, and this article describes yet another one. The Podospora anserina PaMpk1 MAP kinase signaling pathway can generate C, a hereditary unit resembling prions. These authors show that another MAP kinase pathway, PaMpk2, controls the generation of C by activating PaMpk1, revealing unexpectedly complex regulation of a prion-like trait.
Allopolyploidization lays the foundation for evolution of distinct populations: Evidence from analysis of synthetic Arabidopsis allohexaploids, pp. 535547 Starr C. Matsushita, Anand P. Tyagi, Gerad M. Thornton, J. Chris Pires, and Andreas Madlung Allopolyploidycarrying complete chromosome sets of at least two different specieshas been seen as a mechanism for instant speciation. This article shows that different somatic cells of the same neoallopolyploid individual can exhibit different karyotypes, and that somatic mosaics can persist in subsequent generations. The authors characterize and quantify aneuploidy over seven generations in several sibling lines of a synthetic allopolyploid. Their results suggest that this phenomenon has the potential to lead not only to instant speciation but also to instant radiation.
The nearly neutral and selection theories of molecular evolution under the Fisher geometrical framework: Substitution rate, population size, and complexity, pp. 523534 Pablo Razeto-Barry, Javier Daz, and Rodrigo A. Vsquez This article puts forth that nearly neutral evolution cannot explain the high rate of fixations driven by positive selection found in DNA sequences. The authors use Fishers geometrical model (FGM) to simulate evolution from biologically interpretable distributions of mutations. They find that nearly neutral and selection scenarios predict molecular patterns different from previous models. In a selective scenario in the FGM, evolutionary rate depends not on population size, but rather on the complexity of organisms and mutation size.
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By John Lauerman - 2012-06-14T16:00:01Z
Screening the genomes of healthy people may give important clues about their cancer risk, according to a study that suggests advanced DNA technology might be employed early in a patients health assessment.
Among 572 people who underwent a broad analysis, 12 were found to have genes that put them or their children at elevated risk of dangerous tumors, according to the report from researchers at the U.S. National Human Genome Research Institute in Bethesda, Maryland. Eight of the participants had no family history of cancer that doctors normally look to for signals of heightened susceptibility to malignancies, the study said.
The research, released today by the American Journal of Human Genetics, highlights the role that sequencing machines made by Illumina Inc. (ILMN) and Life Technologies Corp. (LIFE) may play in alerting healthy individuals to their risk of disease. The machines can decipher swaths of human DNA in hours, giving massive amounts of information about inherited traits.
The current medical approach for finding susceptibility to disease requires that you or your family members have the condition or have died of it, said Leslie Biesecker, chief of the genetics disease research branch at the Human Genome Research Institute, in a telephone interview. This suggests that it doesnt have to be that way, that we can find susceptibility before all that suffering.
Bieseckers study, called ClinSeq, sequences all the genes in participants DNA to find clues to health and disease. About 1 percent of the human genome, the reproductive code found in each cell, is composed of genes, which are the blueprints for making proteins.
The researchers screened 37 genes in participants DNA for changes that have been linked to cancers. The screen yielded 334 variants of potential clinical importance, most of which were associated with unknown cancer risk.
Eight participants were found to have gene mutations that significantly elevated their risk. Seven had changes in the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes that sometimes appear in families affected with high rates of breast and ovarian cancer, the study said.
Another participant had a mutation in a gene called SDHC, which has been linked to head and neck tumors that sometimes cause severe nerve damage. This person, along with three of those with BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations, had no family history of the cancers related to these genes.
This demonstrates that theres fairly high frequency of useful information that one can gain from the whole exome or whole genome, said Robert Nussbaum, chief of the division of medical genetics at the University of California, San Francisco.
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Public release date: 14-Jun-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Mary Rice mary.rice@riceconseil.eu European Society of Human Genetics
The use of genetic testing to establish racial origins for political purposes is not only scientifically foolish, but also unethical and should be condemned, the European Society of Human Genetics (ESHG) said today (Thursday June 14). The society, which promotes research in basic and applied human and medical genetics and ensures high standards in clinical genetic practice, said that the use by a member of parliament from the Hungarian far-right Jobbik party of a genetic test to attempt to prove his 'ethnic purity' was ethically unacceptable.
The company Nagy Gn scanned 18 positions in the MP's genome for variants that it said were characteristic of Roma and Jewish ethnic groups and concluded that Roma and Jewish ancestry could be ruled out.
Professor Joerg Schmidtke, President of ESHG, said on behalf of the Executive Board: "This is a gross distortion of the values of genetic testing, which is intended to be used to diagnose disease rather than to claim racial purity. In addition, the test proves nothing; it is impossible to deduce someone's origins from testing so few places in the genome. I am sure that clinical geneticists worldwide will join me in condemning this scandalous abuse of a technology that was developed to help the sick, rather than to promote hatred."
Professor Bla Melegh, President of the Hungarian Society of Human Genetics added: "We were shocked to hear that a laboratory authorised to carry out genetic analysis for diagnostic purposes carried out such a test. Not only does it not serve a diagnostic purpose, but it has been used to create tension between people of different ethnic origins. We are asking the Hungarian government to prosecute the company concerned under the 2008 law on genetics, and to take action to ensure that similar abuse of genetic testing cannot take place in our country in future."
The 2012 European Genetics Conferences in Nuremberg, Germany (June 23-26) will provide a further opportunity for the ESHG to denounce such an unethical perversion of genetic science, and insist, at the same time, on the importance of genetic testing in the medical or scientific context of good practice.
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European geneticists condemn use of testing to establish 'racial purity'
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Posted June 14, 2012
Courtesy of Motley Fool
By Seth Jayson
Margins matter. The more Coventry Health Care (NYSE: CVH ) keeps of each buck it earns in revenue, the more money it has to invest in growth, fund new strategic plans, or (gasp!) distribute to shareholders. Healthy margins often separate pretenders from the best stocks in the market. That's why we check up on margins at least once a quarter in this series. I'm looking for the absolute numbers, so I can compare them to current and potential competitors, and any trend that may tell me how strong Coventry Health Care's competitive position could be.
Here's the current margin snapshot for Coventry Health Care over the trailing 12 months: Gross margin is 23.3%, while operating margin is 6.5% and net margin is 4.7%.
Unfortunately, a look at the most recent numbers doesn't tell us much about where Coventry Health Care has been, or where it's going. A company with rising gross and operating margins often fuels its growth by increasing demand for its products. If it sells more units while keeping costs in check, its profitability increases. Conversely, a company with gross margins that inch downward over time is often losing out to competition, and possibly engaging in a race to the bottom on prices. If it can't make up for this problem by cutting costs -- and most companies can't -- then both the business and its shares face a decidedly bleak outlook.
Of course, over the short term, the kind of economic shocks we recently experienced can drastically affect a company's profitability. That's why I like to look at five fiscal years' worth of margins, along with the results for the trailing 12 months, the last fiscal year, and last fiscal quarter (LFQ). You can't always reach a hard conclusion about your company's health, but you can better understand what to expect, and what to watch.
Here's the margin picture for Coventry Health Care over the past few years.
Source: S&P Capital IQ. Dollar amounts in millions. FY = fiscal year. TTM = trailing 12 months.
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