The former executive director of Mississippi State University’s Longest Student Health Center has had his medical license suspended for a year for engaging in an inappropriate relationship with a student who was his patient.
A complaint filed with the State Board of Medical Licensure accused Dr. Clifton Story of professional misconduct for beginning the relationship with the victim while he was still her physician.
During a November hearing, the board’s attorney, Paul Barnes, argued Story violated ethical standards by disregarding the inherent power imbalance between doctors and their patients. Story’s attorney, Matthew Thompson, argued the patient/physician relationship was terminated before the sexual relationship began.
Story, 55, admitted to the relationship but claimed he did not consider the ethical implications at the time.
“I have come to understand the power imbalance,” he said. “… I just tried to be with patients, to sort of treat them as equals and not come across as the arrogant doctor that’s better than you. I guess that’s sort of what I went through with her.”
The board determined Story was guilty of professional misconduct, including unethical conduct, for engaging in a sexual relationship with a patient while serving as their physician, which violates state law.
“Patients are all … considered patients,” Dr. Michelle Owens, president of the board, told Story during the hearing. “Whether they are high school students or college students, whether they have degrees or don’t have degrees, they are still patients.”
Story worked nine years with MSU through April 2022. He continued practicing at Starkville Medical Clinic before moving to St. Dominic’s Madison Clinic in June 2024.
Under the suspension, Story is prohibited from practicing medicine in Mississippi until November 2025, when he will be allowed to petition the board for reinstatement.
The relationship
Story, a family practice physician, was named executive director of the Longest Student Health Center in 2013. The same year, he encountered the victim, who was a “17 or 18-year-old” undergraduate student, for the first time when he performed a sports physical, he told the board.
He began treating the victim on a consistent basis in 2015 for anxiety, stress, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, according to public documents from the board’s ruling. Story told the board a good portion of her treatment involved counseling or “just talking through life.”
In 2018, the victim started graduate school and said she was having weekly appointments at Story’s request that would sometimes last longer than an hour, according to a statement provided to investigators by the victim’s mental health counselor.
“I think it was just talking and working through the questions she’s had about life or the things she had,” Story said when Barnes asked him to characterize the appointments.
In the same statement, the counselor said the victim’s support system started to revolve around Story.
“That support system included him as her primary medical doctor and pseudotherapist, his church, a few same-age peers he knew, and gradually, he included her in with his family by early 2019,” the statement said.
In 2020, Story said his personal and professional life became especially challenging. At work, he was managing the university’s COVID-19 response. His mother died under what he said were mysterious circumstances in April 2020. By the early summer, he and his wife had separated.
Story also began transitioning the patient’s care to other physicians in 2020, including no longer writing her prescriptions after June.
He said he believed this constituted ending the patient/physician relationship though there was no documentation found of a formal termination of the treatment relationship.
Story testified the sexual relationship began in the late summer or early fall 2020, however, the counselor’s statement said the first incident, which the victim characterized as sexual abuse, happened between May and June 2020 at Longest Student Health Center.
During the hearing, Barnes asked Story if anyone from Mississippi State asked him questions about the relationship. Thompson objected to the question, but not before Story said yes. The objection was sustained, so the board didn’t require him to elaborate on the answer.
In 2021, Story’s title was changed to staff physician, and he left the university the next year. The relationship ended in the spring of 2023.
“She wanted it to end more than me, but primarily because of the age gap and the difference between life stages,” Story told the board. “It just sort of ran its course like other relationships do.”
Story said he had never intentionally groomed the victim or used her medical concerns to take advantage of her. But when asked to consider in retrospect if grooming had occurred, he agreed it had.
Further consequences
Vice President for Strategic Communications and Director of Public Affairs Sid Salter at Mississippi State said the university is aware of the allegations and takes such matters seriously. However, he would not discuss specific details due to it being “a personnel matter with a former employee.”
He would not comment on whether Story’s demotion in 2021 was connected to the relationship.
“The safety and privacy of our students, faculty and staff, we say it a lot, but it’s always our highest priority,” he said. “… We have constant training for our employees about what constitutes these sorts of activities for the protection of a potential victim or someone who acts in that way towards someone at the university.”
Along with the suspension, Story was ordered to undergo rehabilitative treatment focused on medical ethics, professionalism and boundary training, among other things. If reinstated, he must submit to ongoing follow-ups for at least another year.
The Dispatch called St. Dominic’s Madison Clinic and sent direct messages to Story on social media but could not reach him by press time.
McRae is a general assignment and education reporter for The Dispatch.
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