Hospitals improved dramatically during the 1800s for several reasons:

Florence Nightingale: raised the quality of nursing by making the profession more respectable. The Nightingale School for nurses opened in 1860. She also promoted light, airy and clean hospitals (she believed in miasma).
Germ Theory & Antiseptic Surgery: from the late 1870s surgeons and doctors demanded that hospitals were clean because they now understood about germs.
Government: encouraged councils to build more hospitals. The 1867 Poor Law Act led to many more hospitals being built by Poor Law Unions and this soon spread to other parts of the country.
Public Opinion: newspapers such as The Times campaigned for improved conditions in workhouses and better hospitals.

However, most people could not afford medical care and, at best, they would buy medicines from the hospital dispensary.

GCSE Health and the People AQA

Hospitals in the Industrial Revolution