ALABASTER, Ala. (WIAT) – An Alabaster doctor’s medical license has been suspended for “unprofessional conduct” after allegations surfaced that he had inappropriately touched a hospital employee on one occasion and inappropriately lifted the drape of a patient on another.

In a hearing held last month, members of the state’s medical licensure board found Scott Munro Kelly guilty of unprofessional conduct after he refused to submit to an evaluation previously ordered by the body.

The board had ordered Kelly to submit to the evaluation “to rule out professional sexual misconduct” after he had been reprimanded by Shelby Baptist Medical Center following an investigation of a 2021 incident inside one of the hospital’s operating rooms. 

“On or about April 14, 2021, Respondent was accused of inappropriately lifting the drape of a female patient during an operating procedure,” the board wrote in a report.

The 2021 incident wasn’t the first time Kelly had been accused of improper behavior in a medical setting. In its report, the medical licensure board noted that Kelly was also accused of “inappropriately touching a hospital employee in the operating room and of making inappropriate comments” in the summer of 2019. 

Following that initial incident, Kelly completed a “comprehensive psychosexual evaluation” and was afterward directed to complete “intensive, residential treatment for his disruptive and boundary-violating behavior,” according to the board. He did not do so, the report said, and instead relayed to the board his request to retire from the profession and surrender his license, thus making any evaluation moot. The board rejected that request. 

It wasn’t, though, until well after the second reported incident that Alabama’s medical licensure board chose to suspend Kelly’s license – not for his alleged inappropriate behavior with a patient and a staffer – but for failure to comply with the board’s evaluation order. 

“Respondent did not obey the Board’s order,” the report said. “That disobedience is ‘unprofessional conduct’ under [Alabama law].”

Despite the board’s decision and imposition of a $10,000 fine, the body left open the possibility that Kelly’s license could eventually be reinstated if he “shows to the satisfaction of the Commission that he has fully complied with all provisions of the Board’s order, all provisions of [Alabama law], and all recommendations of the evaluating professionals that may emerge from the examinations conducted pursuant to the Board’s order.”

CBS 42 reached out to Kelly and to Shelby Baptist for comment on this story but has not yet heard back.