Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
Wiktionary
n. (context UK English) A small rural hospital
Wikipedia
The original concept of a cottage hospital was a small rural building having several beds. The advantages of such a hospital in villages were the provision of care which avoided long journeys to county or voluntary hospitals, facilities to deal more immediately with emergencies and familiarity the local physician might have with their patients that may affect their treatment. This local knowledge of the patient would probably have been lost had they been referred to their nearest county hospital, as was typical for poorer patients.
Some of these buildings continued to be known as cottage hospitals until recent times. In particular, several are still recognisable within the infrastructure of NHS Grampian, Kirkcudbrightshire, Dumfries & Galloway* in Scotland and Norfolk and Suffolk in England, an example being the Aldeburgh Cottage Hospital, which is still working as a traditional cottage hospital. The term community hospital is now applied to most of these buildings where they are used to deliver healthcare, reflecting the wider range of services that are provided in more modern times.
Usage examples of "cottage hospital".
Three times he had made the trip across the state to act as anesthetist at odd early hours in our cottage hospital.
Churches and schools appeared to have been the primary targets: on one occasion, as evidenced by some charred steel equipment that could have come only from an operating theatre, they passed by a small cottage hospital that had been so razed to the ground that no part of the resulting ruins was more than three feet high.
She had been born at the end of 1940, in Cornwall, in the little cottage hospital in Porthkerris, and had spent the war years at Cam Cottage, beneath the shelter of Lawrence Stern's roof.
If the Judge regretted that lunch, and from the reports of the doctors at the Cottage Hospital he had cause to, so did Sir Giles.
So after the local doctor rang up from the cottage hospital to ask if Mr.
Lily Barton was not dead but unconscious from loss of blood and shock in the Wassenden cottage hospital.
Swarms with adders in the summer, the cottage hospital always used to keep the serum.
Mrs Clamp had to take the newly born child into the local cottage hospital the day after Paul's mother left.
He had supposed himself to be in the private wing of the Cottage Hospital.