Chris Mitchell is a Rural General Practitioner and Rural Generalist with more than 35 years of clinical experience in northern New South Wales. He is a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors and was awarded Member of the Order of Australia in 2013 for services to general practice.
Clinical practice
Chris helped establish Lennox Head Medical Centre in 1990. He is a Rural Generalist and helps train the next generation of rural GPs in the practice.
In November 2025, the Rural Doctors Network presented him with the NSW Rural Medical Service Award in recognition of his service to Murwillumbah, Lennox Head and Ballina.
RACGP and college service
Chris served as President of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners from 2008 to 2010. His college service has spanned policy, eHealth and practice systems work, including membership of the RACGP eHealth and practice systems expert committee.
eHealth and the National eHealth Transition Authority
From 2011, Chris led the Adoption, Benefits and Change team at the National eHealth Transition Authority (NEHTA), reporting directly to the CEO. The work covered the rollout of the My Health Record system, eScripts, and Secure Message Delivery into Australian primary care, as well as the change-management work that underpinned it. His consultancy work since has included engagements with a range of organisations, including Telstra Health, as Chair of Telstra Health's ReadCare Clinical Advisory Panel.
A peer-reviewed account of one piece of that work appears in the International Journal for Quality in Health Care: 'The eCollaborative: using a quality improvement collaborative to implement the National eHealth Record System in Australian primary care practices' (Knight, Szucs, Dhillon, Lembke, Mitchell, 2014).
Boards and governance
Chris is a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. His board service has included the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, RACGP Oxygen, NPS MedicineWise, Therapeutic Guidelines Limited, the Remote Vocational Training Scheme, North Coast GP Training and the Rural Doctors Network.
The work on boards led directly to the writing of GPs as Directors, his guide for clinicians moving into board and director roles, published through Medius Global.
Medius Global
Chris is a co-founder of Medius Global, an advisory firm focused on the business side of Australian general practice. Medius works with GP practice owners and groups on practice assessment, remediation, transaction coordination and business expansion.
Most of Chris's current writing is published on the Medius Global site: pieces on board readiness for clinicians, clinical governance, partnership and succession structures, and the financial mechanics of practice ownership.
Honours
- 2025 — NSW Rural Medical Service Award, Rural Doctors Network
- 2013 — Member of the Order of Australia (AM), for services to general practice
- 2010 — Honorary Fellowship of the Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners
- 2010 — Honorary Fellowship of the Academy of Medicine of Malaysia