Health. David Larivière, the new head of five hospitals in the Vosges region, no longer wants to do “a little bit of everything everywhere”.

The 2,000 staff members at the Émile-Durkheim hospital will have to get used to it. It won't be surprising to see their new boss regularly visiting their departments.

Having taken office on October ^1st , David Larivière has been entrusted with significant responsibilities, but he has no intention of remaining behind a desk. "I'm a hands-on person," says the man who regularly participates in triathlons. Walking the long corridors of a hospital or crisscrossing the roads of the department doesn't faze him.

However, by being chosen to succeed Dominique Cheveau , David Larivière finds himself wearing several hats. The first is that of joint director of five hospitals: Épinal, Remiremont, Neufchâteau, Le Thillot-Bussang and Val du Madon (Mirecourt-Mattaincourt).

In addition to this, there are several public nursing homes with a total of 1,500 beds. And to top it all off, David Larivière has been appointed director of the Vosges hospital group, which also includes the Saint-Dié hospital.

Having lived in Moselle for thirteen years, and having worked in several healthcare establishments in Paris, Strasbourg or Thionville , David Larivière is therefore getting to grips with a Vosges territory which he only knows "as a tourist".

He already knows that he cannot be everywhere at once. "That's why we are looking to recruit two deputy directors in Remiremont and Neufchâteau," explains the man who worked in recent years as a health consultant for the private group PwC.

While he is currently focused on familiarizing himself with the various healthcare facilities he will manage, the new director had already analyzed the situation of hospitals in the Vosges region when he applied last spring. "I had the impression that we were doing a little bit of everything everywhere," he confides. A philosophy that is not to his liking. "If there are services that need to be provided as close as possible to population centers, such as emergency care, I prefer to consolidate medical expertise at a single site. I therefore believe that cancer and oncology should be developed in Épinal."

Advocating for increased collaboration with the Nancy-Brabois University Hospital, David Larivière already has several projects in mind. "Emergency services are one of them. We need to manage to reopen the emergency department at the Remiremont Hospital 24/7 . But to do that, we need to find doctors, so we need to be attractive." The same goes for continuous care, meaning on-call and standby shifts, because "the lights stay on 24 hours a day in a hospital."

This will require improved external communication, as well as a streamlining of operations. As a seasoned financial expert, David Larivière intends to reduce the chronic deficits of Vosges hospitals . "Balancing the books will allow us to invest and thus offer even more attractive technical facilities, which are already of good quality, for young doctors."

Because while he finds himself managing 4,500 staff in the hospital sector, and several hundred more in social care, the new hospital director knows that the situation in the Vosges region will improve at the same rate as he manages to resolve the shortage of doctors . "We don't have a staffing problem at the paramedical level. But it's more strained in terms of doctors. And that's why I repeat, the Vosges region won't get through this without the help of Nancy."