A cottage hospital is a semi-obsolete type of small hospital, most commonly found in the United Kingdom. The original concept 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.