Rafael Mendez, M.D., Surgeon

“As a physician, my focus is on helping
to heal the patient. As a human being,
my focus is on knowing each person who
comes to me for help and medical care.
Being a doctor and being a person,
are one in the same for me.”
Rafael Mendez, M.D., F.A.C.S.

Dr. Rafael Mendez is a surgeon and former co-medical director of the Multi-Organ Transplant Center at St. Vincent Medical Center in Los Angeles, California. He and his twin brother, Dr. Robert Mendez, co-founded the National Institute of Transplantation (NIT) in 1984.

As a dedicated physician and surgeon, Dr. Mendez is as committed to his pioneering skill as he is to each patient who comes under his care. As a graduate of Stanford University and the University of California San Francisco Medical Center, he specializes in kidney transplantation and has participated in or performed over 5,000 kidney transplants since 1970.

A member of the USC School of Medicine Salerni Collelgium, co-founder of the Southern California Organ Procurement Agency (SCOPC), now OneLegacy, and a member of the Board of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Dr. Mendez travels the world to lecture on transplantation advances. He has spoken to physicians and surgeons from Edinburgh, Scotland to Singapore, China discussing the necessity of organ transplantation as well as organ preservation.

He has served as the chairman of St. Vincent Medical Center’s Department of Renal Transplantation, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles Urology Section, California Hospital Medical Center’s Division of Urology, the Central Area Teaching Hospital Association, and as Chairman of urology at Hospital of the Good Samaritan. He is also a consultant to the Saudi-Arabian Health Ministry and the University of Autonomous School of Medicine in Guadalajara.

Dr. Mendez is also Professor of Urology at the USC School of Medicine, and a Board Member of Healthcare Partners Medical Group.