If it's anything like HIPAA, the individual releasing information does not change the hospital's legal duty to keep the information private. The only way the hospital can release the information is if the patient specifically authorizes the hospital to release it. Even then, the patient has to say who the recipient is, and the hospital is authorized to release it only to that recipient. It doesn't matter if the patient wrote a best seller disclosing every detail of a hospital stay - the hospital is still bound by HIPAA law.
I've only taken a quick look at the Hawaii DOH pages, but I didn't see anything there that said once the information was made public by the person, Hawaii DOH was absolved from the law. The only way to get this released from the DOH is within the law - a court order. The only way to get this from a hospital is for 0bama to sign a release, or someone to get a court order, subpoena or discovery request.
There’s an OIP Opinion Letter that says that once information is made public or published there is no privacy interest in the information any more. The exception to disclosure that is always cited is the privacy exemption - but if the information is already published - say, in a newspaper or on a website - that information isn’t eligible for the privacy exemption.
Also, the legislative history of UIPA shows that the bill’s exemptions were not intended to close information that had previously been authorized for release. So anything that was authorized for disclosure by law before mid-1988 isn’t subject to UIPA’s exemptions. I’ve posted about it at my blog, documenting what I’m saying.
The birth certificate number and date of birth were required to be publicly-accessible as index data before 1988 so those items are not eligible for the privacy exemption that the DOH keeps using.
I don’t know what the requirements are for the hospital but I can almost guarantee you that Obama was not born in a hospital. Some of the reasons why are posted at http://butterdezillion.wordpress.com/2010/01/11/red-flags-in-hawaii-2/