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So Cardinal Health, the medical distribution giant, is spinning off a unit called CareFusion. The outfit is so big that it will become a part of the S&P 500 tomorrow, on its first day of trading as a stand-alone public company. We figured we (and, by extension, you) should at least know what it is the company sells.

“Our focus has been on the top two challenges which hospitals around the world face: medication safety and preventing hospital-acquired infections,” company CEO Dave Schlotterbeck told us in a quick phone chat today. “Our largest business is our dispensing business,” Schlotterbeck said. “These are machines that dispense medications and supplies in acute-care hospitals.” The company also sells infusion equipment for delivering drugs — think of the machines with digital readouts that you see hooked up to hospital patients’ IV lines.

In the preventing-infections bucket, Schlotterbeck includes ventilators and related equipment, as well as an antiseptic that’s applied to the skin before surgery. These business lines, and a few others we didn’t mention here, add up; an Aug. 21 brief from Raymond James estimated CareFusion’s market cap at about $4 billion.

As the Associated Press notes, the spinoff marks a strategic shift for Cardinal, which tried to use some of the profits from its distribution business to expand into faster growing segments. “Companies go through phases,” Schlotterbeck said. “We’re in the phase now where, like many companies, we’ve diversified too much and we need to focus on the core business.”

Spinoff Bonus: For more on CareFusion, Schlotterbeck and the company’s separation from Cardinal, see this WSJ story. If you want to dive into the numbers, read the company’s SEC filing.

Photo: iStockphoto

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CareFusion, the S&P 500’s New Health-Care Company