Objective To analyze data for 1950 injured patients in the People’s Hospital of Deyang City following the Wenchuan earthquake, to provide relavent evidence to inform future decision-making in relation to establishing and improving frontline hospitals in disaster areas. Methods The basic situation of the wounded inpatients and the total situation of medical rescue were analyzed with data provided by the Department of Information at the hospital from May 12th to July 12th 2008. Microsoft EXCEL was used for data input and SPSS 11.0 was used for statistical analysis. Results By July 12th, a total of 1950 injured patients and 1378 inpatients had been treated in the hospital. Most inpatients were treated during the first week after the earthquake (about 65.6%), with the number of the inpatients reaching a peak of 703 on the first day, May 12th. The majority of the wounded inpatients were from the Mianzhu, Shifang and Jingyang districts of Deyang city. The diagnosis on admission included fracture (45.9%), craniocerebral injury (20.9%) and thoracoabdominal injury (14.7%). There were 48 deaths including 30 pre-hospital deaths, 10 emergency deaths and 8 inpatient deaths. There were 441 patients who were transported and transferred to the 2nd and 3rd hospitals from the People’s Hospital of Deyang City, which was the first hospital to organize the large-scale transporting of patients in the whole province. There were 1378 inpatients from the disaster area and 726 healthcare workers were sent to the disaster area to provide medical rescue. Psychological treatment was provided to more than 5000 inpatients, inhabitants, healthcare workers and army members. Conclusion The People’s Hospital of Deyang City successfully has accomplished a difficult task as the hospital nearest to the disaster area and played an important role during emergency medical rescue.