Shelf Talk is created and maintained by the staff of The Seattle Public Library.A customer recently mentioned that Contra Costa Door was a highly rated garage door installer on Consumers’ Checkbook for the San Francisco Bay Area. Databases require a library card number and PIN for remote access. Read our previous posts on Proquest Consumer Health database,, and Consumer Reports for health products, and stay tuned for more posts. This post is part of our Staying Healthy with Your Library series featuring online consumer health resources available from The Seattle Public Library. Please be sure to contact us through our Ask Us reference question platform with any questions you may have. As more library services become available, we will make announcements on our website. You can find all these and more compiled on our Staying Home page. digital subscriptions to newspapers and magazines.While all Library locations are closed to the public, we will continue to provide the many digital services you have come to love: You’ve done it! These are the basics for using the Consumers’ Checkbook about as well as your trusty community librarian to search for healthcare providers! Again, it’s important to note that Consumers’ Checkbook is a non-profit, and isn’t trying to sell you on these providers, but are trying to help you make an informed consumer decision. It isn’t clear when their ratings were last updated, but you can tell from user comment dates, and the site includes their ratings methodology. With the ratings results and individual provider’s pages, there isn’t a dedicated option to download or print the pages, so you’ll need to use the browser function to print any information you’d like to keep.įor the articles from Consumers’ Checkbook, there are authors and publication dates listed, though no information on the credentials of the authors. Further down, it includes consumer ratings and comments. It has their name, contact information, a map, whether they are highly rated, and pricing information. When you select a provider, you’ll go to their rating page. Some pages have slightly different information, and some categories go straight to the ratings page without a robust page with articles and the like. The results can include “(Business) Name,” “Distance” from your ZIP, “Checkbook’s Top Ratings,” “Price,”“Ratings” from users (who must have accounts), and “Most Recent Comment” from users. You can filter your results by distance from a ZIP code, recommendations by users, and so on. At the time of writing, there are 300 ratings in the Puget Sound area for dentists. When you select ratings, it allows you to input how far afield you’d like to search from a particular ZIP code you input, and what specialty, if any, you’d like to see. If you select a category, such as “dentists,” you‘ll be taken to the a “dentists” category page that includes an overview of the topic, articles on dentists, the number of ratings in the area, and the ratings for providers. The menu to the right of the page includes other “advice” pages on topics such as “help at home for seniors” and “aging in place.” This takes you to a homepage for “Healthcare Providers” which has just over 20 different categories, including “doctors,” “dentists,” “emergency rooms,” and more. It’s categorized by “Popular,” “Doctors,” “Dentists,” and “More Ratings & Advice.” You can also select “See all Healthcare Providers” at the bottom right of the menu. Click on “Healthcare Providers” and a large menu of individual types of providers is revealed to the right, taking up the entire screen. Click on “Services We Rate” and a menu along the left of service categories will appear. On the Consumers’ Checkbook homepage, you’ll see a button at the very top left of the screen that says “Services We Rate.” You can also find these services further below on the screen, but the search bar and browsing are somewhat buried beneath the fold. To access this database from your own device, sign in with your library card number and PIN, then select Consumers’ Checkbook from our list of Online Resources. In the Puget Sound region, you’ll find they have reviews for thousands of doctors, dentists, massage therapists, psychologists, nursing homes, and more. It’s a consumer-driven non-profit with clear methods for ratings and reviews. Consumers’ Checkbook is the local Consumer Reports, but for services instead of products.
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