FORT WORTH, Texas — For the second time in a month, the John Peter Smith Hospital has declared a Code Yellow, meaning the hospital is in an overcrowding "disaster mode."
The last Code Yellow was issued April 30 and lasted for two days.
A "record number of patients have flooded the John Peter Smith Hospital Emergency Department," and JPS Health Network is asking patients with non-life-threatening injuries to consider going to JPS Urgent Care or JPS Family Health Center, according to a statement released by JPS Health Network Tuesday.
The emergency department at the hospital is on pace to admit almost 11,000 patients in the month of May alone — a record for the hospital, according to the statement. The record for most visits in one day: 427 patients. A typical day sees 80 to 100 people admitted. The psychiatric emergency center is seeing a record number of patients too.
Right now, there are 56 patient care rooms in the JPS Emergency Department.
The reason for the uptick in admissions is because of a high number of patients who need inpatient stay, director of emergency management Lance Lynch said in the statement.
Lynch also said that the hospital could become more overwhelmed in the coming days, since hospital traffic typically goes up in the days after a holiday — in this case, Memorial Day.
"Holidays are usually a lighter time in the hospital, it’s the days immediately after the holiday when we see the number of people who come in start to increase," Lynch said in the statement.
