News in brief - March 28, 2011

Connecticut, California regulators investigate Health Net data breach

For the second time since May 2009, Health Net has reported the loss of identifying information for millions of members and physicians, prompting investigations by regulators in two states.

Health Net announced March 14 that its information technology contractor, IBM, had notified it that several of its servers from its Rancho Cordova, Calif., office were "unaccounted for." The company's statement said it was notifying members about the physicians whose information was contained in the lost equipment and offering free credit monitoring.

The California Dept. of Managed Health Care, the California Dept. of Insurance and the Connecticut attorney general said they were investigating the incident, particularly because it appeared to have been reported several months after the company learned about the missing data.

As part of a settlement with Connecticut authorities over its May 2009 loss of a portable hard drive from its Connecticut headquarters, Health Net was required to pay $250,000 and develop a corrective action plan to improve its security procedures.

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Blue Shield of California withdraws latest rate hike

Following harsh criticism from state and national officials unhappy with its string of rate increases, Blue Shield of California announced March 16 that it had withdrawn a pending rate increase on its individual members averaging 6.5%.

The company's 340,000 individual members had been subject to two other rate increases over the last year. The latest proposed hike, if not abandoned by the insurer, would have meant a cumulative 87% increase in premiums for some members.

California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones had cited the pending rate increase -- along with other recent hikes -- as the reason his office should have the authority to review, then approve or reject rate increases. State law gives the commissioner only the authority to monitor whether insurers meet a minimum medical-loss ratio.

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National Library of Medicine tops U.S. Google searches on drugs

A new study published in the March issue of The Annals of Pharmacotherapy looked at the sources of online drug information that are found when doing searches. It found the National Library of Medicine to be the first result in about 75% of the searches for brand and generic drug names originating from Google USA.

In contrast, Wikipedia was the first result for about 80% of the searches for generic drug names originating from Google Canada, Bing and Yahoo. On these sites, more than two-thirds of searches for brand-name drugs led to industry-sponsored sites.

The study found that patients most often search for drugs that have the potential for dependence, or drugs associated with stigmatized conditions, such as antidepressants, or that have received media attention (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21343404).

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