North Country Family Health Center: Why a Healthy Workplace Matters
Because caring for the community starts with caring for the people who serve it.
If you’ve ever tried to juggle doctor’s appointments, insurance paperwork, and life all at the same time, you know how exhausting healthcare can feel. It’s a lot. North Country Family Health Center exists to make that load lighter.
As a Federally Qualified Community Health Center, North Country Family Health Center brings primary and preventive care, dental and mental health services, case management, insurance enrollment help, and WIC together under one roof. It’s one of just 1,400 centers nationwide built around this kind of coordinated care, and everything is designed around real people with real lives.
At its core, the mission is simple: improve health, wellness, and quality of life. Not in a lofty, abstract way—but in the everyday sense. Helping someone feel heard. Helping families stay healthy. Creating a community where a healthy life both feels and is possible, not out of reach.
Measuring Employee Happiness®
You can’t take great care of a community if the people doing the caring are burned out, unheard, or stretched too thin. North Country Family Health Center gets that.
That’s why they participated in Amazing Workplace’s Employee Happiness® Conversation—an anonymous survey designed to capture how employees actually feel, not just what they think they’re supposed to say. It’s about checking the emotional pulse of the workplace, honestly.
This year 81% of employees took part, which says a lot on its own. And of those who responded, 91% said they often feel satisfied, happy, or very happy at work. As a result, North Country Family Health Center has been recognized as a Certified Amazing Workplace for the second year in a row.
Listening to the People Doing the Work
While numbers are helpful, the real story lives in the people behind them. What comes through loud and clear in anonymous employee comments is pride. Pride in the work. Pride in the mission. Pride in knowing that what they do every day actually makes a difference for their neighbors, their friends, their families.
Just as important, leaders didn’t treat last year’s feedback like a box to check. They listened. Then they acted. Communication and work-life balance became real focus areas, not vague goals. And it paid off—the number of employees who are happy about workplace communication and work-life balance increased significantly.
Some employees even took the time to call out how much they noticed those efforts. That kind of feedback doesn’t happen unless people feel something has truly changed.
Healthcare is an extraordinarily demanding field, and we understand that recruiting and retaining a brilliant workforce requires more than good intentions, it requires steadfast leadership and sustained commitment. We are proud to be an employer of choice in our community by fostering a workplace where talented people feel valued, supported, and inspired not only to stay, but to grow both personally and professionally. That is why we continually listen to our employees and evolve our approach to meet their needs and strengthen an engaged, high-performing team as it is this team that makes our vision possible: a community where everyone can achieve a healthy and wholesome life. – Joey Marie Horton | CEO
All of this reflects leadership that understands something fundamental: happiness at work doesn’t come from perks or slogans. It comes from clear communication, reasonable balance, and leaders who are committed to getting better—not just once, but continuously.
Keeping the Momentum Going
Of course, improvement isn’t a finish line. It’s more like a rhythm. You pause, you notice what’s working, you adjust where things feel off, and then you keep going.
That’s exactly how North Country Family Health Center is approaching the year ahead. Using diagnostic tools within the Amazing Workplace Platform, the organization is doubling down on its strengths while staying honest about where there’s still room to grow.
Because when the people caring for the community feel cared for themselves, something powerful happens: quality of life—at work and beyond—gets better for everyone.
