Dr. Patel was born, raised, and educated in Nadiad and Ahmedabad in Gujrat, India. He completed his Residency in Orthopaedic Surgery at Harvard Medical School in December 1971 and has been on the faculty at Mass General Hospital ever since.
In 1982, Dr. Patel was named the Chief of Arthroscopic Surgery at MGH. He played a key role in showing that arthroscopic technology could reduce healthcare costs by improving safety and quality and decreasing a patient's postoperative period of disability. His efforts were instrumental in making MGH a world-renown center for Arthroscopy and Orthopaedic Surgery.
Dr. Patel is a founding member of the Arthroscopy Association of North America and the International Association of Arthroscopy. With his focus on improving safety and quality, Dr. Patel has trained surgeons around the world, specifically in developing nations, where Arthroscopy is valuable because of the reduced risk of infection. In 2001, he established Asia's first Psychomotor Skills Lab in Ahmedabad, India. The lab is a partnership among the public, private and academic sectors and trains surgeons and students in India and Southeast Asia in arthroscopic surgery.
Dr. Patel has served as a member and Chairman of the Board of Registration in Medicine, as well as a member of the Board of Directors and the Strategic Planning and Executive Committees of the Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB). In April 2003, the FSMB honored Dr. Patel with the John H. Clark, MD Leadership Award. That same year, he was also named Commissioner of the National Committee on Foreign Medical Education and Accreditation by the Bush Administration.
On June 14 2010, MGH unveiled the Dinesh G. Patel, MD, Arthroscopic Learning Laboratory to teach trainees in this discipline.