Leicester's hospitals had to declare an "internal major incident" as they fought to cope with hundreds of A&E patients and emergency admissions.
It was the seventh time in the past three months that such a status has been declared at the city's three hospitals, Leicester Royal Infirmary, Glenfield and the General.
The status was stepped down at 6pm on Monday.
Declaring a major incident is a sign things are exceptionally busy and that special measures are needed to help the hospitals cope.
The special measures include extra staff being drafted in, other health organisations, including GPs, and social services being called upon to help ease pressure and non-urgent activities being stepped down.
High demand for emergency services means the city's A&E department is continuing to fail to meet its target of 95 per cent of patients being seen within four hours.
Latest figures show that in the week ending December 28, emergency doctors saw 2,206 patients in the infirmary's A&E department. Of those, just over 76 per cent were seen within the Government target of four hours.
That meant 528 people had to wait more than four hours - nearly double the English average of 268.
Leicester West MP Liz Kendall has called on the Government to "get a grip" on improving waiting times in A&E.
Richard Mitchell, chief operating officer at Leicester's hospitals, said: "The current pressures on Leicester's A&E are unprecedented for this time of year.
"It is likely that these pressures will only increase from now until March."
He added: "I would like to re-iterate the importance of people making sure they choose they right NHS service when they are feeling unwell."
One of the problems affecting Leicester's hospitals is a lack of beds at community hospitals and places at nursing and care homes. This means many patients are having to say in hospital longer than necessary, which in turn means some patients who need to be admitted have to wait for a bed.
At the end of December, for example, there were 120 patients who could not be discharged because of a lack of beds elsewhere.
Latest figures show that on Monday, 303 people were discharged - but there were still 61 patients who could not be moved because there was no suitable care available in the community.
In a report to be considered by directors at Leicester's hospitals on Thursday, Mr Mitchell said: "Attendance, admissions and acuity remain high at the infirmary emergency department and the clinical decisions unit at Glenfield Hospital, which is now receiving higher medical takes than ever before."
He added: "Performance will only consistently improve when more patients are discharged than before and, most importantly, we need to see a change in the ratio of discharges to admissions.
"Despite 11 per cent more patients being discharged year to date compared to last year the benefit of this has been completely offset by increasing admissions."
Ms Kendall, Shadow Minister for care and older people laid the blame at the door of Government.
She said: "Accident and emergency departments now have the worst waiting times in a decade.
"Last month alone, 2,500 patients in Leicester were made to wait more than four hours before they were seen.
"This just isn't good enough and the Government needs to get a grip."
Ms Kendall, named by the Health Service Journal as the 43rd person out of 100 with greatest influence on national health policy and the NHS, added: "My constituents need a proper long term plan to get the NHS back on track."
