I can think of a few disadvantages, too!
It depends upon how one defines "hospital."
For me, growing up in central and western Nebraska, I think of 40-50 bed establishments, all on one level, usually located in a residential neighborhood. The sort of place with a lot of grass on which kids can during the summer play baseball; where there's a "back porch" for patients to be wheeled outside to enjoy the weather; where the windows are near ground-level so that those underage (usually those less than 14 years old) can visit patients through the screen from outside; where there's no steps, no elevators, to anything.
That sort of place, which can still be found in smaller places.
The smallest towns with hospitals in Nebraska have populations of 576 and 632.
It's not really cost-efficient, because a miniature hospital has to have the same sorts of things as a gigantic hospital, but the care is perhaps better; I know for a fact that physician-and-nurse-caused infections and deaths in small hospitals are much less than those in big-city hospitals.
And as for the staff, it has to meet the same standards as those physicians and nurses and other professionals at big-city hospitals. In other words, a small-town physician is just as competent, just as skilled, as a big-city physician.
As a matter of fact, I myself was "delivered" by a member of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons, a physician who never practiced in a town of more than 10,000. He was of Japanese derivation, although born alongside the Platte River of Nebraska, and just simply liked small-town practice. I know when I was born, he managed to put me together in less than a couple of minutes, although alas he couldn't do anything about the absent ears.
There's a bias against small places, as if it's "natural" to have better things in a big place. This bias is quite untrue; on the "average," small places have things just as good, and sometimes better, than things in large places.
My oldest sister died in a hospital in Omaha--I call those monolithic things "body warehouses"--and at some point when I was there, I decided to get something to drink and eat. I was directed to the dining area, open to the staff, visitors, and patients.
I was stunned. The place was a five-star restaurant, with even white-coated waiters, heavy linen napkinery, sterling silver silverware, fine china, crystal goblets, candles. The only thing it lacked was the menu written in French.
I thought what the Hell; hospitals in the restaurant business?
Of course, these "extras"--along with marketing and public relations and advertising departments--do not possibly pay for themselves, and so have to be financed by hiking hospital rates. It should be no wonder hospital costs are so enormous; the rent of a bed has to subsidize the absolutely unnecessary palatial accoutrements.
