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Cardinal Health’s CEO says “ruthless prioritization” was needed to turn around the Fortune 500 company whose earnings plummeted $300 million just three years ago. The Gen X chief executive, Jason Hollar, slashed business segments, slimmed down the company and didn’t shy away from ruffling feathers with his new reports. But instead of revolting, he reveals they actually embraced the changes: “People want to win.”
Cardinal Health is one of the largest healthcare giants in America, supplying medical products and data solutions for over 90% of U.S. hospitals. But just a few years ago, its operating earnings plummeted $300 million as some segments struggled. When Jason Hollar took over as CEO of the Fortune 500 company in late 2022, the business turnaround required some serious tough love.
“This concept of relentless simplification and ruthless prioritization was the cornerstone of the change management and the strategy,” Hollar tells Fortune.
“And I use the word ruthless for a very particular reason, to put a little bit of an edge to it, because I didn’t want people just to reprioritize everything they’re doing. I wanted them to stop doing certain things.”
Before Hollar took the reins, certain segments were costing the $38 billion health care company hundreds of millions of dollars each year. Cardinal Health’s non-GAAP operating earnings fell 12% from $2.3 billion in 2021 to $2 billion in 2022, while non-GAAP net earnings plummeted 13% from $1.6 billion to $1.4 billion in the same time frame. So on his first day as chief executive, Hollar laid out a cutthroat game plan to bring Cardinal Health back to its former glory, including slashing business segments and slimming down the company. And so far, it’s worked—the business’ operating earnings for Q3 of the 2025 fiscal year hit $730 million.
Usually ruffling feathers is a major concern of incoming chiefs. But perhaps surprisingly, Hollar says that Cardinal Health’s staff weren’t just on board—they were itching for an overhaul.
“[Cardinal Health] is a great place to work. But [employees] were getting frustrated as well that we weren’t succeeding,” Hollar says. “It’s great to be with a great group of people, but people want to win, and we weren’t winning as much as we could have.”
It’s no easy feat to turn around a heritage company like Cardinal Health that’s been operating for nearly 55 years. But Hollar’s “ruthless” approach was the juice the healthcare business needed to get back on track.
The 52-year-old executive first joined the Fortune 500 business as CFO in the thick of COVID, when the business was reeling from uncertainty around those pandemic-era changes and product liabilities like opioids. The company had a large balance sheet restructuring, and some recent acquisitions from prior leadership were driving operational challenges.
Two years later as CEO, he had the extensive knowledge base to turn things around quickly—so he exited product lines, pulled Cardinal Health out of a “significant number” of countries, and sold off its non-healthcare portfolio.
“There were a lot of changes done in a pretty short period of time,” Hollar explains. “I saw that some poor decisions on capital deployment was a primary driver of some of those operating challenges. So I believed if we did fewer things, [if] we simplified the operations in the organization, and then took those resources and reprioritized it to the faster-growing parts of the industry in the business, that we could be a lot more successful.”
Cardinal Health’s Medical segment, which manufactures surgical and laboratory products, also needed a complete revamp—it had lost $16 million in just one quarter, prior to Hollar stepping in. The CEO also increased its capital expenditures and selling, general, and administrative expenses (S&GA) in speciality growth initiatives. Simultaneously, Hollar streamlined Cardinal Health’s focus. During his first 18 months, he didn’t pursue any significant M&A, and instead put all his energy into existing products and clients. The business later acquired Specialty Networks in 2024 for $1.2 billion.
“It was an absolute pivot from where we were. We were trying to grow in so many different ways. We were not doing any of them really well,” Hollar says. “Our service levels improved dramatically, our productivity, our efficiency, and even things like safety and quality are at much better levels. My philosophy is that you can’t just do some of the processes better some of the time—all [are] deep-rooted success across the board…or you don’t do any of them well.”
It wasn’t just the more technical side of Cardinal Health that needed a facelift—Hollar says employees were happy to work there, but were a bit dejected by recent losses. To build up morale and finally get workers on the “winning” side of things, Hollar delivered an honest truth.
“I told the team, ‘There’s one value we don’t show up with every single day, and that’s accountability. That’s the one we have to work on,’” Hollar says. “We’re not going to change the values, we’re not going to change our mission and vision. What we need to do is we actually just need to live up to them.”
Hollar says he knew exactly what leadership shake-up would help him achieve his mission. He separated three of his eight direct reports, eliminating two of the roles entirely. By restructuring the business, he was able to add another three direct reports. Hollar was changing up his personnel, and moving fast—which he says proved to employees that his dedication was stronger than just platitudes.
“[I] demonstrated to the team that these are a lot more than happy words, these are our actual actions, that we’re going to put resources behind the strategy that I laid out,” Hollar says. “Ultimately that led to $5 billion of M&A that we’ve done over just the last 18 months.”
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
