After 15 years of service, Sherry Hall, a legend at NorthShore Health Centers, is retiring this month. Hall has handled accounting and payroll for the nonprofit health care provider since their main office was a small clinic tucked away in Portage High School. She has seen the organization grow to now serve tens of thousands of patients each year across the Region.
Hall’s sister, Janice Wilson, founded the clinic over 25 years ago and she joined the team after leaving her role as an elected official in the Town of New Chicago. Hall had experienced all kinds of work with numbers and bookkeeping since the ‘70s, and Wilson saw an opportunity to bring her aboard since Wilson’s accounting manager was retiring and moving away.
“In sisterly talk, I was explaining how I was looking to do something new and she said, ‘Well, why don’t you come work for me,’” Hall said. “At the time there were around 60 employees; now, we’re around 370. I started out part-time as I finished things up for the town, and then I came on full-time.”
NorthShore’s dramatic growth over the last decade was both impressive and meaningful for Hall, who is seeing her sister’s dream come to life.
“It’s been amazing to see,” Hall said. “My sister saw a need that had to be addressed and it’s grown into such a wonderful thing for everyone involved. Our communities that we serve definitely know we’re here for them.”
NorthShore operates under the philosophy of providing quality care to everyone, regardless of their ability to pay, which makes it an essential resource for many in the community.
“For some people, they first came because it’s one of the only places they thought they could go,” Hall said. “Then, they find out we’re one of the best places you can go to for care and we’re getting better all the time. There are so many more services compared to when I first started: dentistry, optometry, behavioral health. People are choosing NorthShore because they trust in the quality of our care.”
Hall handles a lot in her role as accounting/payroll manager, but payroll quickly grew to be her favorite aspect of the job when she started working with numbers.
“I’ve always liked doing payroll the best,” Hall said. “I feel like that’s the part of my job where I really have an impact on other people because they’re counting on me to get it right. It’s all numbers, they need to be right, and if they’re not, it’s my job to find out how to make them that way.”
When she first joined the team, it was easy to get to know everyone else face-to-face – that is harder now with close to 400 employees, but everyone still knows Hall’s name.
“We used to have our monthly staff meetings at our McKay site in the high school. Now we have to do annual breakfast meetings at banquet halls,” Hall said. “There’s so many new faces that it’s hard to meet everybody, but they know your name and if they need you, they’ll call you.”
Hall built a reputation for being trustworthy, reliable, and punctual – if she gets an email, she aims to reply within 15 minutes whenever possible. Looking back on her career, she believes her legacy is in that trust she’s built with everyone at NorthShore.
“I hope that one of the ways I’ve left my mark is that all the employees, even those I’ve never met face-to-face, know I’m here and they can ask me anything,” Hall said. “They can just shoot me a text with anything they want to know, like I just got one today asking about a scheduled increase in pay.”
Hall aimed to serve as a bedrock for the providers who care for patients, even as the team grew and spread out over what is now a dozen locations.
“I think it’s important that our team has someone they can go to who can give them an answer, or help them find one,” Hall said. “I might get a phone call from a provider in Hammond thanking me, and that makes you feel good. I might not see patients like they do, so I want to be here to support them.”
Hall is looking forward to using her retirement to spend more time with her mother and grandkids and enjoy the simple things in life on her own schedule.
For more information about NorthShore Health Centers, visit northshorehealth.org.
