Physician and Patient Safety Act

This bill requires the Health and Human Services Secretary to create regulations ensuring physicians with hospital privileges have a fair hearing and appeal process before their privileges are terminated, restricted, or reduced. It directly affects physicians and hospitals by mandating that hospitals cannot deny these hearings through third-party contracts, cannot require physicians to waive their hearing rights as an employment condition, and must keep hearings confidential unless there's an ongoing patient safety threat. The regulations must prevent reporting of these proceedings to the National Practitioner Data Bank or future employers, except in specific safety cases. The rules would take effect within 18 months of the bill's passage.