Spent some time in a similar situation earlier this year in Aus. Wasn’t strip searched but they check everything you bring in, turn out your pockets and confiscated phone charging cables, shoe laces, belts and drawstrings from pants. Also not allowed to take bags onto the ward. It’s a safety measure for everyone’s sake: staff, patients and visitors. Its not necessarily that you would be a danger to others, as other patients stealing something and doing something dangerous.

Don’t know about the US but there is no way the hospitals over here are buying body scanners with their shoestring budgets.