Checkbook.Org is the online version of the publication, "Consumers' Checkbook."
The publication has been around for several years, and it has a simple purpose, according to publisher Robert Krughoff.
"Yeah, what checkbook does is rate local service firms. From auto repair shops, plumbers, veterinarians, hospitals, banks, all kinds of local services.
"We use different ways of evaluating those services. One thing we do quite is survey consumers. So we survey Checkbook Magazine and Checkbook.Org subscribers and also Consumer Reports magazine subscribers. Consumer Reports generously lets us do that. So we ask them to rate firms they've used.
"We don't just depend on consumers' opinions of prices. We actually do apples-to-apples comparisons on specific service jobs, and we find big price differences. But if we're evaluating hospitals, we may calculate risk-adjusted death rates looking at hundreds of thousands of hospital discharge records."
Checkbook.Org is a subscription-based service, but KING 5 viewers have limited access to some of the organization's ratings.
This week (Oct. 26 to Nov. 1), you can access ratings of primary care physicians by clicking here www.checkbook.org/king5
