TY  - JOUR
AU  - Gruber,Jonathan
AU  - Kleiner,Samuel A.
TI  - Do Strikes Kill? Evidence from New York State
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 15855
PY  - 2010
Y2  - March 2010
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15855
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15855.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Jonathan Gruber
MIT Department of Economics
E52-355
50 Memorial Drive
Cambridge, MA 02142-1347
Tel: 617/253-8892
Fax: 617/253-1330
E-Mail: gruberj@mit.edu

Samuel Kleiner
Cornell University
College of Human Ecology
108 Martha Van Rensselaer Hall
Ithaca, NY 14853
Tel: 607/255-1027
Fax: 607/255-4071
E-Mail: skleiner@cornell.edu
AB  - Concerns over the impacts of hospital strikes on patient welfare led to substantial delay in the ability of hospitals to unionize. Once allowed, hospitals unionized rapidly and now represent one of the largest union sectors of the U.S. economy. Were the original fears of harmful hospital strikes realized as a result? In this paper we analyze the effects of nurses’ strikes in hospitals on patient outcomes. We utilize a unique dataset collected on nurses’ strikes over the 1984 to 2004 period in New York State, and match these strikes to a restricted use hospital discharge database which provides information on treatment intensity, patient mortality and hospital readmission. Controlling for hospital specific heterogeneity, patient demographics and disease severity, the results show that nurses’ strikes increase in-hospital mortality by 19.4% and 30-day readmission by 6.5% for patients admitted during a strike, with little change in patient demographics, disease severity or treatment intensity. This study provides some of the first analytical evidence on the effects of health care strikes on patients, and suggests that hospitals functioning during nurses’ strikes are doing so at a lower quality of patient care.
ER  -