![]() In 2003 the company expanded to include publications for Seattle-Tacoma, the Twin Cities, Chicago, the Delaware Valley, and Boston. In 1982, its first magazine for another city began, focusing on the San Francisco Bay Area. The first publication only covered the Washington DC area. The ratings are based on items including surveys of consumers, reports from undercover shoppers, expert surveys, the number of consumer agency complaints against a company or service provider, and an analysis of publicly available databases. ![]() The first issue of Consumers' Checkbook came out in 1974. As a part of the intention to provide unbiased information the publication does not carry advertising, but does charge a subscription fee. Over time the publication came to also review other professions and services, like physicians. In response he founded the publication as a not-for-profit venue for rating professionals in fields including mechanics and plumbers. Company overview Ĭonsumers' Checkbook and Center for the Study of Services were founded by company President Robert Krughoff after he had a bad auto repair experience. Currently most of the Center's income comes from doing contract surveys for major health plans. There are both print and online publications in the Boston, Chicago, Delaware Valley, Puget Sound, San Francisco/Oakland/San Jose, Twin Cities, and Washington, D.C., areas. It was founded in 1974 in order to provide survey information to consumers about vendors and service providers. We cannot guarantee a response or return of submissions do not send original documents.Consumers' CHECKBOOK cover Fall 2011/ Winter 2012Ĭonsumers' Checkbook/Center for the Study of Services (doing business as Consumers’ CHECKBOOK) is an independent, nonprofit consumer organization. Include name and phone number no phone calls, please. Mail: The System, Washington Post Health Section, 1150 15th Street NW, Washington, DC 20071. But we are looking for patterns of problems and excellence that may direct our reporting. WE CANNOT ADVOCATE ON BEHALF OF INDIVIDUALS PURSUING CLAIMS OR COMPLAINTS. The System welcomes reports from patients, providers, insurers and others about the delivery of health care. The 454-page book can be ordered for $24.95 at or by calling 80. and doctors know which ones are good doctors." "This shows how doctors choose for themselves. The judgments of other physicians "should help to raise people's odds of finding a good doctor over a bad doctor, because doctors know something about whom they interact with themselves," Krughoff says. Krughoff says the aims of the book are to help steer consumers to doctors who are highly respected by their colleagues for a second opinion, to offer consumers help in selecting a health plan and to assist in choosing a specialist. "You have to make a lot of assumptions to give it weight." Mike Preston, executive director of the Maryland State Medical Society, a professional group of 6,500, agrees. There are many physicians who labor quietly and deliver great care. "The best way to read it is with a grain of salt," says Stuart Seides, a District cardiologist who made Checkbook's list. It explains that doctors in specialties with many practitioners, like general surgery and internal medicine, are likely to earn fewer colleague "mentions" than doctors in smaller specialties such as vascular surgery and geriatrics.Ĭritics say this grading system is too dependent on reputation and that consumers should first seek recommendations from physicians they trust. On its grading system, the book is more upfront. It is informal in its approach and doesn't lend itself to formal statistical inference." This is a matter of drawing recommendations. "It's not as if we were doing a poll with calculus and intervals and statistics. What about drawing conclusions from a survey that drew a response rate of only about 6 percent? "Yes, it's enough," said Krughoff. "No, I don't think it's misleading ," he said, "because we say how broadly we cast the net - we say how many had the chance to respond." While the nonprofit did mail 260,000 surveys to doctors nationwide, asking which specialists they "would consider most desirable for care of a loved one," it received only 16,000 to 20,000 responses, Checkbook president Robert Krughoff admitted last week. In the book's introduction, Checkbook says it compiled its data after researchers "surveyed 260,000 physicians in more than 50 of the largest U.S. What you need is a better understanding of how the publication chose which 20,000 specialists - including 1,128 in the Washington area - to include on its all-star list. You don't need an advanced degree to figure that out. "All doctors are not the same," proclaims a new book by Consumer's Checkbook that lists "top-rated' physicians in Washington and other metropolitan areas.
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