From left: Anthony Alvarez (SVP/GM, ADSG/Edgepark), Rob Schlissberg (president, at-Home Solutions), and Russ Hicks (SVP, Cardinal Health at-Home) at Investor Day 2025.
When Rob Schlissberg, president of Cardinal Health at-Home Solutions, took the Investor Day stage at the New York Stock Exchange on June 12 to talk about the growth and strategy of that business segment, he made history. This was the first time that the leader of at-Home Solutions had been chosen to speak directly to investors in this way.
“Cardinal Health (NYSE: CAH) has simplified our operating model and made bets, if you will, on the types of growth businesses that we want to focus on, one of which has been our at-Home Solutions business,” Schlissberg told HME Business in a June 9 conversation prior to Investor Day.
“That really started with when Jason Hollar, our CEO, changed the way we operated. We went from being two large operating segments with a bunch of smaller businesses underneath to being five individual operating segments.”
While Cardinal Health’s pharmaceutical and specialty solutions continues as the company’s largest business, “We’ve had some of these other businesses really branch out to be able to stand on our own two feet,” Schlissberg said. That new structure “is good for us from an accountability standpoint, but also gets us more access to capital to make the investments that we need in our business.”
Living lives uninterrupted
Ahead of the Investor Day call, Schlissberg said the at-Home Solutions team wants “to help people live their lives uninterrupted.”
He explained, “When you think about someone who is living with diabetes, they don’t always think of themselves as a patient. They’re just a person, right? They don’t want to be treated like a patient; they want to be treated like a person. And a CGM [continuous glucose monitoring] device, we believe, is the absolute standard of care. Everybody living with diabetes and even those that are pre-diabetic should be on it as well. We want to get as many [CGMs] in as many hands as possible.
“One of my stats to think about is there are over 4 million people living with diabetes that are using insulin, have access through their insurance to a CGM device, and are not using a CGM. There are millions more that are not using insulin, or millions more whose insurance isn’t covering it today. And we are advocating hard that they should be.”
A simple, but not easy, goal
During Cardinal Health’s Investor Day, Hollar prefaced his introduction of at-Home Solutions’ portion of the program by explaining what led to the restructuring that Schlissberg referred to.
“When I arrived at Cardinal about five years ago, in the CFO role at that time, I was always intrigued by these businesses,” Hollar said. “They each were solving very complex challenges for our customers, and they were in very fast-growing parts of the industry. But what was also clear, as I spent more and more time with them, is how much they were the leaders within their respective parts of the industry and how much underlying potential there was.”
Hollar also noted differences in how the different segments operated and how different their investment needs were. When Hollar became CEO nearly three years ago, Cardinal Health began the restructuring process.
“This was not about moving around the chess pieces and getting you all confused,” Hollar said to the Investors Day audience. “This was all about driving accountability deeper into the organization.”
The new strategy was also meant to give business segment leadership the freedom to make decisions that are best for their unique business environments. “They were buried so deep before, it would have been very difficult to do something like that,” Hollar added. “That’s been our focus, just grow, grow, grow. And we’ve done that both organically, and for the first time in many years, inorganically within the at-Home Solutions business.”
Then, Schlissberg took the stage.
“I can honestly say, no offense to my colleagues, that I’ve got the best job here,” he said. “There is no place I’d rather be. We infuse this mindset into our culture every day.”
Schlissberg began by reviewing growth opportunities for at-Home Solutions, noting, “First, what we do is simple. It’s not easy, but it’s simple. We get people the critical medical supplies they need to live their lives uninterrupted.
“Second, we have a long runway for success. We are scaled and have a strong foundation to build on. And lastly, we’re committed to being a trusted partner in long-term chronic care management.”
Schlissberg then explained how at-Home Solutions is serving and supporting patients via a two-pronged approach.
“No one chooses to have a chronic condition,” he said. “We strive to make their lives better. We do this by being both a direct-to-home distributor and a direct provider.”
Cardinal Health at-Home, Schlissberg said, is “our leading wholesale distributor of home medical supplies, the B-to-B side of our business. We work with home medical equipment providers, home health and hospice agencies, and other entities that provide medical supplies to patients in their homes. When someone needs care in their home, we make sure the supplies they need are there when they need them.”
In the business-to-business at-Home model, “We’re in the background,” Schlissberg said. “We’re invisible. We’re an extension of our customers, of their business.”
And for Cardinal Health at-Home Solutions’ business-to-consumer portion, “We have our scaled, provider side,” Schlissberg said. “We’re combining the recently acquired Advanced Diabetes Supply (ADS) with our Edgepark business to create one of the most powerful platforms in the industry to serve patients with chronic conditions. ADS’s focus is solely on diabetes, with an exceptional customer experience and strength in government payers.”
In contrast, Edgepark “has expertise across categories, including diabetes and extensive commercial access,” Schlissberg said, adding that Edgepark and ADS combined now have access to almost 90% of covered patients in the United States.
“Through these businesses, we reach more than 6 million patients with over 22 million shipments annually.”
at-Home Solutions’ footprint and vision for growth
Schlissberg described the home medical equipment (HME) industry as a $45 billion addressable market.
“We’re very intentional about where we focus, and just as importantly, where we don’t,” Schlissberg said. “We want to ship small supplies and small boxes at a rapid rate, and do so as cost efficiently as possible. We want to focus on the medical supplies that patients need over and over again. That’s our core.”
In further explaining where at-Home Solutions sees room to grow, Schlissberg pointed out the toll that diabetes takes on patients and the health-care system. “Diabetes is one of the fastest-growing and costliest conditions in the U.S.,” he said. “Within diabetes, CGM has become the standard of care, and utilization continues to grow.”
Still, there is plenty of opportunity to improve utilization, Schlissberg said.
“Even with broader access, nearly 65% of all eligible people with diabetes are not utilizing CGM,” he noted. “This opportunity is key for us. It is a large and growing segment, and we are the industry leader. We’ve grown revenue double digits consistently, weighted more to the distribution side versus the provider side. But that’s where ADS accelerates our strategy with a long track record as the leader in the growing diabetes industry.
“Adding ADS’s diversified patient acquisition engine, driven by a relentless commitment to growth, unique partnerships, and specialized sales and marketing capabilities, we will further accelerate our growth.”
The importance of supply chain expansion
As the at-Home Solutions business grows, “We must continue to build our supply chain for the future,” Schlissberg said. “We’ve made significant investments to improve customer experience, drive productivity, and create capacity to support that growth.”
He described robotics, automation and artificial intelligence (AI) as being “foundational” to the at Home’s strategy.
“When we talk about our strategy, it starts with our supply chain,” Schlissberg said. “We have over 2 million square feet of dedicated distribution space across 11 sites. And we’re excited to announce that we have two more new sites planned.”
After opening new distribution facilities in Ohio, South Carolina, and Texas in the last three years, Schlissberg said at-Home Solutions “will next add capacity out west and in the northeast, as well as retro-fitting certain legacy sites with the new automation. By fiscal year 2028, we will more than double revenue per square foot by creating more effective space and driving the optimal product mix.”
The business unit’s investments, Schlissberg added, are paying off. “We are operating at levels as good as we have on record across service, productivity, safety. Our dedicated distribution network is truly a differentiator. Our sites only service at-Home Solutions and our customers, meaning we can design our systems and processes to specialize in direct-to-home distribution.”
In adding that the at-Home Solutions team takes its mission seriously, Schlissberg said, “If we have a bad day, a patient on the other end has an even worse one. There is no room for error. The best supply chain is a requirement, not a nice-to-have.”
And the ability to continue to promptly deliver supplies such as CGMs is critical as the at-Home Solutions business seeks to reach more patients with diabetes, as an example.
“That CGM pie is getting bigger, and there’s still an opportunity in the existing population to close the gap for those eligible and not using CGM,” Schlissberg said. “There’s estimated to be more than 4 million people living with diabetes on insulin, eligible through their insurance that are not using CGM today.”
With Edgepark and ADS, at-Home Solutions has “the experience and scale to navigate payment models, pharmacy and medical benefit, as well as cash pay,” Schlissberg said. “We can do this on behalf of our customers, so they don’t feel that complexity that we know exists. All they see is a box on their doorstep; we take care of the rest. Today, we are particularly interested in category expansions and services that live in and around diabetes.”
The goal now is to grow at-Home Solutions’ current reach.
“Our intention is to grow from the 6 million patients we serve today to more than 10 million annually in the next five years,” Schlissberg said. “Our differentiated strategy to growth make this an achievable target. Every one of those patients on the other and of an order, a shipment, a conversation — we care deeply about them. At the end of the day, we are a critical part of their care team. We take this mission seriously.”
Photo courtesy Cardinal Health.
