Just thinking: Do hospitals have restrictions regarding who was admitted and when? Now we have HIPPA, was there some restriction back then or would current law cover dates prior to the law coming into effect?
You raise the questions I wondered about. I have to get medical records for clients in my work. To get ANY info, I have to have a signed HIPAA-compliant authorization for release of confidential information.
If I’m looking for records from more than 5 or 7 years ago, they have to be retrieved from the hospitals’ archives. They wouldn’t show a patient from 1961, much less divulge any information on whether the person was or was not a patient without authorzation. If they did they would be subject to enormous fines.
Hawaii law allows hospitals to purge records after 25 years. It's VERY unlikely that encounters from 1961 exist at any of these hospitals.
I was wondering about HIPAA (”HIPPA”), too. There’s no way a hospital now would or could give info to a reporter or citizen. Like you, I don’t know if info pre-HIPAA would not be covered by the Act. Now, it would take a subpoena from a legal entity.