2026 Paving the Way Speakers

friday Keynote

Pilar Ortega, MD, MGM

Across the United States, millions of patients depend on communication in non-English languages in order to best access and receive safe, high-quality health care. While the field of language access has made major strides in interpreter training and standards, one critical component remains understudied and often overlooked: the language skills of clinicians themselves. This keynote presentation will explore new research on clinician multilingualism and its implications for patient experience, clinician and interpreter workflow, and health system quality. Drawing on empirical findings, Dr. Ortega will describe the Physician Oral Language Observation Matrix (POLOM), a validated tool designed to assess clinicians’ language proficiency in clinical contexts. She will examine how standardized clinician proficiency assessment can clarify roles, support safer team-based care, and ultimately enhance the working relationships between clinicians and medical interpreters. Attendees will gain a deeper understanding of how clinician language skills can be evaluated and incorporated as a key piece of the language access puzzle—and why interpreters and clinicians should be partners in shaping the future of multilingual care.

By the end of this keynote, participants will be able to:

1. Describe current evidence about clinician multilingualism, including what is known, what remains unknown, and how clinician language skills impact communication quality and interpreter workflow.
2. Explain the purpose and evidence for the Physician Oral Language Observation Matrix (POLOM) as a method for assessing clinician language proficiency in health care settings.
3. Identify ways that validated clinician language assessments can support interpreters, improve interprofessional collaboration, and contribute to safer, more effective team-based multilingual care.

Dr. Pilar Ortega is a Latina multilingual board-certified emergency medicine physician, scientist, and executive leader with expertise in language access in health care and medical education. Dr. Ortega is Chief Executive Officer of the Center for Clinician Multilingualism, where she develops and implements scalable solutions for teaching and testing clinician skills for communicating with patients in non-English languages. Dr. Ortega is also Founder and Chief Executive Officer of the National Association of Medical Spanish, a non-profit organization focused on education, research, mentorship, and collaborations to improve health for the Spanish-speaking population.

Describe current evidence about clinician multilingualism, including what is known, what remains unknown, and how clinician language skills impact communication quality and interpreter workflow.

Explain the purpose and evidence for the Physician Oral Language Observation Matrix (POLOM) as a method for assessing clinician language proficiency in health care settings.

She holds an appointment as Clinical Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine and Medical Education at the University of Illinois Chicago and serves as a member of the executive committee for the Medical Organization for Latino Advancement.

Dr. Ortega has published more than 55 peer-reviewed publications and four books, including the popular textbook series, Spanish and the Medical Interview, for physicians to enhance their Spanish-language clinical skills. She serves as Collection Editor at the MedEdPORTAL journal and as a member of the Association of American Medical Colleges Research in Medical Education committee. She is also a medical advisor in the development of the first online, open access Panhispanic Dictionary of Medical Terminology (Diccionario panhispánico de términos médicos), a project involving the academies of medicine of 13 Spanish-speaking countries around the globe.

Dr. Ortega earned her undergraduate degree in philosophy at the Johns Hopkins University, her Doctor of Medicine degree at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine, her residency in emergency medicine at the University of Chicago, and a master’s degree in graphic medicine from the Universidad Internacional de Andalucía.