Challenge: Gastro Health was processing a substantial number of off-cycle payments every pay period. Additionally, employees were asking for 401(k) loans or the ability to cash out their PTO to get cash.
How Rain helped: Once Gastro Health offered Rain’s earned wage access product, there was no longer any need to process off-cycle payments. Because employees could access their own earned wages, they could wait for a payroll adjustment with their next paycheck. Hourly worker off-cycle payments were reduced by nearly 100%.
Gastro Health is one of the nation's largest gastroenterology network practices, operating in more than 300 locations across 12+ states and employing 3,200 people, from front-desk receptionists to physicians to corporate staff. Managing HR systems for an organization that size, across that many locations, means every process has to work cleanly. When something breaks, Gastro Health feels it fast.
Concepcion (Connie) Tuma, Director of HRIS, has been with Gastro Health for nearly five years. During that time, she’s overseen payroll, time management, training and development, and employee relations. Her team consists of five people.
We recently caught up with Connie to find out why Gastro Health decided to implement a financial health solution and what her experience with Rain has been like so far. Here is what she told us in her own words.
It wasn't one big crisis. It was a slow, constant drip.
Our 401(k) plan doesn't allow loans. So the benefits team was fielding the same questions over and over: “Can I borrow against my 401(k)? Can I cash out my PTO? Can I buy more PTO?” Meanwhile, my payroll team was dealing with off-cycle payment requests, often triggered by simple manager errors. A missed punch. A PTO entry that didn't go through. Suddenly an employee didn't get paid for a day, and $100 turned into an emergency.
We were running off-cycle payments every single pay period. Amounts ranged from $74 to $1,000. Each one required accounting and finance involvement, and it became a real headache at month-end reconciliation. Our CFO would approve a $100 off-cycle because, to that employee, it genuinely was an emergency. I understood that. But it wasn't sustainable.
What bothered me most was that we were repeatedly disappointing our employees. They'd come to us with a real need and we'd have to tell them no. That's not the kind of employer we want to be.
I knew there had to be a better way.
I went to the Quartz network, where Rain is listed, and started talking to EWA providers. I looked at UKG Wallet, since UKG is our HCM and time and attendance system. I looked at a Bank of America early access product and a third provider I honestly can't remember, because I wasn't impressed enough for it to stick.
When I met Rain, my reaction was immediate, they blew UKG out of the water. The implementation looked genuinely user-friendly, not just in theory. And the team made it clear they were going to be real partners, not just a vendor who handed us login credentials and disappeared.
I brought it to our benefits team. They loved it. I brought it to HR ops. They loved it. We moved quickly from there.
I don't say this lightly, because I've been through a lot of implementations. The Rain-UKG integration was the easiest implementation ever. If everything could work like that, we'd be integrated with a lot more systems.
My advice to other administrators going into this, think about what you don't know yet. When things are working smoothly, it's easy to assume they'll keep working. But file transmissions can fail. Deductions can invert. Someone leaves the team and institutional knowledge walks out the door. I wasn't prepared for some of those early hiccups, and they were mostly human error, not system failures.
Build your action plan before you need it. And build your relationship with your customer success team before you're in the middle of a problem. When I had an issue on a weekend with a missing file, I went to LinkedIn and found Nick was actually online. He helped me immediately. But I also knew Nick because we'd been communicating. That relationship matters. You don't want the first time you're leaning on someone to be the moment you've got a real problem that can’t wait.
The most immediate, measurable outcome was the off-cycle payroll runs.
We’ve gone from processing them every pay period, to running them maybe once a quarter. When we do run them, it's for salaried employees, not hourly staff. For our hourly population, we've reduced off-cycle payments by nearly 100%.
That's not a small thing. It means less fire-fighting for our payroll team. Fewer reconciliation headaches for accounting and finance. And fewer uncomfortable moments where a manager has to tell an employee we can't do anything for them right now.
Now, when a payroll mistake happens, I tell new leaders the same thing in every onboarding: it's not an emergency. We're not running an off-cycle. If that employee needs their money today, they go to Rain.
We have just under 2,000 eligible hourly employees. About 38% are enrolled, and roughly 20% transact regularly. That mix makes sense to me. Some employees use it as a true emergency buffer and hope they never need it. Others use it consistently as part of how they manage their cash flow between paychecks.
We're on a biweekly pay cycle. When a new hire starts and their first paycheck is still two weeks away, Rain gives them something real to fall back on. I've noticed a lot of new hires access Rain within their first two or three days. That tells me it's filling a genuine gap, especially for employees who don't have savings to float themselves through a delayed first check.
We also operate in a gig economy. Our hourly employees can go to Uber Eats or DoorDash and cash out the same day. Rain lets us compete with that. It's not the same type of work, but the ability to access earned money quickly is no longer exclusive to gig platforms.
For employees who pick up extra shifts, like our anesthesiology nurses who earn a bonus and a higher rate for covering additional hours, Rain means they can access that money faster. That matters when you're asking someone to give up their time on short notice.
Quantitative data takes time. We run our employee survey on a biennial schedule, so we don't have formal satisfaction numbers yet. But there's one story I think about often.
Early on, a single mother on our team, with three kids, was in a genuinely hard spot. She reached out to the benefits team asking for a 401(k) loan. We couldn't approve it. But we were able to point her to Rain. She used it. She later reached out to tell us that while it wasn't everything she needed, it held her over during a really difficult time.
Most employees don't share those stories. Financial stress is personal and people don't tend to broadcast it. But when someone takes the time to say thank you, that means something. It tells me this benefit is doing exactly what it's supposed to do.
Rain fits into our broader employee engagement and total rewards strategy in a way that nothing else did. We have recognition programs where employees can earn extra money through mentoring and other activities. But those rewards aren't immediate. When someone is in a genuine bind, those programs don't help them today.
Rain fills that gap. Employees aren't going to check-cashing companies or payday lenders. They're accessing money they've already earned, with no loans, no interest, no debt cycle. Entry-level turnover is often driven by small wage differences, like an extra dollar an hour at a competitor. A financial safety net like Rain gives employees one more reason to stay.
One thing I can say is that employees are happier. Managers call me when new employees ask about loans or PTO cash-outs, and I tell them to point people to Rain. Nine times out of ten, the response comes back: they're going to use it, thanks.
Not everyone uses Rain wisely, and that's something we're actively addressing. We've seen employees transact multiple times a day, paying a small fee each time, when one well-timed request would have cost them nothing or much less. That's not a Rain problem. It's an education problem.
The financial health resources Rain offers are part of the answer. If an employee understood that they'd spent $100 in fees over a month, they'd likely change their behavior. We're working with Rain on how to surface that education more effectively for the employees who need it most.
Don't hesitate.
Health care is a competitive market. We are all competing for the same talent. You can't always win on salary. But you can win on the full picture of what it's like to work for your organization, and Rain is part of that picture.
Entry-level employees will leave for a dollar more an hour. That's just reality. But if you can give them stability, if you can make sure they're not going home and stressing about how they're going to cover an unexpected expense before their next paycheck, you hold on to them a little longer. They see the value of what you offer. That matters.
The implementation is genuinely easy. The customer success team is exceptional. They treat you like a partner, not a ticket number. When I had a problem on a weekend, someone who I'd never spoken to before called me to make sure my file was uploaded and confirmed it went through. That's not standard. That's the kind of support that makes you confident you made the right call.
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