Emergency department utilization during a doctors' strike.

Emergency department (ED) patient volume at Jerusalem's Shaare Zedek Hospital was 33% higher during the 1983 doctors' strike as compared with the same period in 1982. Excess visits were recorded for both sexes (P less than 0.0001), but there were many more excess visits by females than males. The largest increase in visits by adults (60-70%) was in persons aged 40-64 years (P less than 0.02), and there was also a large and unexplained increase in ED visits by girls under age 6 (P less than 0.0003). In contrast to excess ED visits, which were higher during the strike for both sexes, excess hospital admissions via the ED were recorded only among females (P = 0.007). The number of ED visits during the strike was increased on all three hospital work shifts (P less than 0.0001), with the greatest number of excess visits occurring between 7 AM and 3 PM.