When the doctor’s away, the patient is more likely to survive

[PADemD]

2. When Doctors Go On Strike Patients Stop Dying

For example, in a strike in Los Angeles County, California in January 1976, doctors went on strike in protest over soaring medical malpractice insurance premiums. For five weeks, approximately 50% of doctors in the county reduced their practice and withheld care for anything but emergencies. One analysis, quoted by Cunningham and colleagues, found the strike may have actually prevented more deaths than it caused.

It's the fact that elective, or non-emergency surgery, tends to stop during a doctors' strike, which seems to be the key factor. It looks like a surprising amount of mortality occurs following this kind of procedure which disappears when elective surgery ceases due to doctors withdrawing their labour. Mortality declined steadily from week one (21 deaths/100,000 population) to weeks six (13) and seven (14), when mortality rates were lower than the averages of the previous five years.

However, as soon as elective surgery resumed, there was a rise in deaths. There were 90 more deaths associated with surgery for the two weeks following the strike in 1976 (ie when doctors went back to work) than there had been during the same period in 1975.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/dr-raj-persaud/when-doctors-go-on-strike_b_1513689.html