An affable senior civil servant, with recognized “social fiber” from the town hall of Paris to Matignon via the Elysée, Nicolas Revel takes control of a suffering AP-HP, where his negotiating skills will be put to the test. At 56, he succeeds Martin Hirsch, who for almost ten years had led the first French hospital group, according to the report of the Council of Ministers on Monday.
Some would have preferred him to the Ministry of Health, where he would have had – in the opinion of a regular on avenue Duquesne – “much less trouble winning his arbitrations” than the short-lived Brigitte Bourguignon. But not sure that the ex-director of cabinet of Jean Castex at Matignon, who would have declined the Interior in 2018, dreamed of the post while shaving.
So here he is at the helm of the Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Paris, flagship of a drifting hospital fleet: emergencies, maternity wards, psychiatry, geriatrics… 39 establishments and nearly 100,000 employees, scoop like the others, with 15% of beds closed and 1,400 vacant nursing positions.
Before his time at Matignon, he had headed the National Health Insurance Fund from 2014 to 2020. A position awarded by François Hollande, who had previously recruited him in 2012 as Deputy Secretary General of the Élysée Palace, in tandem with Emmanuel Macron .
Unprecedented public hospital crisis
This enarque, son of the writer Jean-François Revel and the journalist Claude Sarraute, first cut his teeth at the Court of Auditors, before entering politics from the left. Technical adviser to Jean Glavany at the Ministry of Agriculture, he joined and then headed the cabinet of Bertrand Delanoë at the town hall of Paris.
Martin Hirsch has left office amid an unprecedented crisis in the public hospital. Congested hospitals, growing medical deserts, “loss of sense” of the profession for staff, emergency services on the verge of syncope: the wounds of the healthcare system are raw at the end of more than two years of pandemic which have wrung the caregivers.
Along with school, it is one of the two major projects of Emmanuel Macron’s new five-year term, who has planned to launch his major health conference in July with the key to a “real collective revolution to be made”.