In March, GT Independence (GTI), the payroll provider for thousands of DDS and DSS-funded patient care assistants (PCAs), paid nearly $1 million in backpay to the New England Health Care Employees Union after DSS PCAs filed hundreds of complaints about incomplete and missing paychecks. Despite this development, Jen Marfyak, a PCA who assists several DDS patients, tells Inside Investigator that nothing has changed.
“I unfortunately live paycheck to paycheck,” said Marfyak. “This not getting paid, not knowing when I’m getting paid, is really messing me up.”
For the past seven years, Marfyak has worked as a PCA assisting her uncle Doug Lavery, a provider for DDS’s Community Companion Homes program. Lavery, who has himself shared his own long list of complaints with Inside Investigator regarding DDS and GTI, cares for three elderly disabled men out of his home in Waterbury.
Marfyak says that since 2023, when the state signed a three-year, $126 million contract to make GTI the fiscal intermediary for the state’s DDS and DSS PCAs, she has had persistent technical issues with GTI’s app used for clocking in and out of shifts, difficulty accessing paystubs, issues with underpayment or late payments, and an inability to quickly or easily get a hold of GTI assistance staff when issues arise. Before contracting with Michigan-based GTI, DDS used Sunshet Shores, a Milford-based company, as their payroll provider. Marfyak said none of those issues were present during that time.
“We had Sunset Shores before GTI, and they were in Milford, so if there was any problem, we could just call them and we talked to the same person [every time], and they would fix it instantly,” said Marfyak. “Trying to call GTI is like, almost impossible. It’s awful.”
Marfyak said that over the past two months, she has had four late payments, costing her $200 in overdraft fees. While she is supposed to be paid weekly for her work, Marfyak said she went two weeks without pay at the beginning of April, and was ultimately shorted 8 hours’ of pay when it arrived. It has since happened again, and she said that this Friday, she will have made it three weeks without a paycheck. Marfyak described her experiences as “so stressful and frustrating.”
“I got into a car accident, and so I have a rental car,” said Marfyak. “I had to return my rental car because I didn’t have the money to cover it.”
On the off chance she gets a hold of a GTI representative over the phone, a process she said typically takes hours, Marfyak said they are usually unhelpful. Marfyak said some representatives have asked her if the patients themselves, all of whom are elderly and severely disabled, would be able to get in touch with them to confirm their hours. She’s also privy to hearing representatives play the blame game and said that both DDS officials and GTI representatives take turns accusing the other party of wrongdoing.
“You call GTI, they blame the state, the state blames GTI,” said Marfyak. “So, you know, it goes back and forth, but GTI won’t tell me anything, like, it’s my paycheck, it’s my money, what do you mean you can’t do anything?”
This blame game has occurred publicly; as previously reported by WFSB, both DSS and GTI representatives have routinely blamed each other for payroll discrepancies. As Marfyak herself has experienced, GTI representatives have blamed state agencies for failing to provide them with participant budgets, which are used to allocate clients’ funds to service providers such as PCAs, while DSS officials have blamed GTI for technical inefficiencies. Last session, a bill was proposed that would have fined GTI and DSS for any payroll discrepancies discovered through quarterly audits to reimburse short-changed PCAs. While the bill was passed out of the Human Services and Appropriations Committees, it was never brought to a vote. During the bill’s public hearing, DSS Commissioner Andrea Barton Reeves admitted that while both parties have made mistakes, the onus was on GTI to improve its payroll portal.
Marfyak said she doesn’t know who to blame.
“I don’t know if it’s more GTI or the state,” said Marfyak. “I’m not sure.”
Marfyak shared with Inside Investigator her own technical difficulties. She said that PCAs can’t check their pay stubs through GTI’s app, which is used to clock in and out, and that the app is often unreliable. She finds herself routinely “spending 15 minutes” each day, restarting, deleting, then reinstalling the app whenever she gets to Lavery’s house before she can get it to work. As Lavery’s patients need round-the-clock care, Marfyak is always checking in to a shift at the same time another PCA is clocking out and vice versa. She explained that this also causes issues because if there is any overlap in time between when the leaving PCA clocks out and the arriving one clocks in, GTI flags it as a “timesheet conflict.” Both employees then have to call GTI to sort it out to ensure they get their full paycheck.
“If your hours overlap, like, say I signed out right at three o’clock, and Jack [another PCA] signs in at three o’clock, they won’t pay you,” said Marfyak. “One time, after everything was already signed and approved, it said something like a ‘timesheet conflict,’ and then it was gone.”
Marfyak said that these flags are often made late into the pay period, ensuring that the issue can’t be rectified before her direct deposit hits.
“Say it happens on a Tuesday; payday is Friday,” said Marfyak. “Sometimes it won’t show up until Friday, showing a time conflict, so now it’s already like — it’s pretty much already too late, you’re going to miss that whole day until your following paycheck.”
Last month, Lavery told Inside Investigator about his own inability to access GTI’s portal, rendering him unable to replace other PCAs who quit due to persistent late payments. Marfyak told Inside Investigator that despite Lavery’s attempts to rectify this issue since January, he still remains unable to hire staff.
“He’s been trying to, I think, for literally over two months, get staff in here,” said Marfyak. “It’s impossible.”
She argued that the work PCA’s do — cooking, cleaning, and changing diapers for clients, showering, shaving, and taking them on excursions — is hard enough as it is without the payroll problems. Marfyak said PCAs make “maybe $3 or $4 more an hour than a cashier,” and receive minimal PTO.
“The least they can do is pay us on time,” said Marfyak. “It isn’t a quick phone call either. I’m wasting time when I’m not at work, you know? I want my freaking two days off, but no, I’m going back and forth with this one, that one, I mean, it’s absurd.”
Marfyak said at this point, she feels hopeless that the situation will ever get better.
“It’s sad because I don’t think anything is going to help it or fix it,” said Marfyak. “I think it just is what it is, and they’ll do nothing about it.”
A public relations specialist provided a statement on behalf of GTI, stating that the backpay it gave to DSS PCAs was “a state-directed workforce initiative, not a settlement or penalty assessed against GT Independence.” Furthermore, they said that GTI remains, “committed to working closely with state partners to ensure authorized payments are processed accurately and in accordance with program requirements.”
“GT Independence takes concerns from program participants, employees and families very seriously,” reads GTI’s statement. “We understand the critical role these programs play in people’s lives and remain committed to providing accurate, timely services while complying with all state and department requirements that govern self-direction programs.”
GTI’s contract with the state is set to expire this August. Kevin Bronson, DDS’s Director of Communications, told Inside Investigator that the agency is “currently conducting an RFP process for Fiscal Intermediary services.”
“To avoid impacting the ongoing procurement process, we are unable to provide additional comment at this time,” said Bronson.
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