Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Rising Gasoline Prices Increase New Motorcycle Sales And Fatalities, He Zhu, Fernando A. Wilson, Jim P. Stimpson, Peter E. Hilsenrath

Publications and Research

Background: We examined whether sales of new motorcycles was a mechanism to explain the relationship between motorcycle fatalities and gasoline prices.

Methods: The data came from the Motorcycle Industry Council, Energy Information Administration and Fatality Analysis Reporting System for 1984–2009. Autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) regressions estimated the effect of inflation-adjusted gasoline price on motorcycle sales and logistic regressions estimated odds ratios (ORs) between new and old motorcycle fatalities when gasoline prices increase.

Results: New motorcycle sales were positively correlated with gasoline prices (r = 0.78) and new motorcycle fatalities (r = 0.92). ARIMA analysis estimated that a US$1 increase …

A Neural Network Analysis Of Treatment Quality And Efficiency Of Hospitals, Viju Raghupathi, Wullianallur Raghupathi

Publications and Research

Objectives: Due to the escalating healthcare expenditure and the number of hospitalizations, it is becoming increasingly important for healthcare organizations to evaluate the cost and improve the quality and efficiency of treatment.

Method: We deploy neural networks to examine the strategic association between hospitalization experience and treatment results. The healthcare data for the years 2009-2012 are downloaded from the Statewide Planning and Research Cooperative System (SPARCS) of the New York State Department of Health (NYSDOH). We operationalize the hospitalization experience using the indicators facility ID, procedure description, type of admission, patient disposition upon discharge, APR severity of illness, source of …