Adams County prosecutors have filed more-severe charges against a University of Colorado Hospital doctor accused of groping a patient’s penis.

Matthew Uhlenkott, 32, was scheduled to go on trial Oct. 7 on a single count of unlawful sexual contact.

That charge alone could have sent Uhlenkott to prison for three years, but last week prosecutors amended the charges against Uhlenkott, charging him now with unlawful sexual contact on an at-risk adult, and two more counts of felony unlawful sexual contact. Prosecutors added the more serious “at-risk adult” charges because the alleged victim is blind. Combined, the three charges against Uhlenkott could send him to prison for as long as six years.

Uhlenkott’s trial has been delayed until March 2014 and he is scheduled to appear in court for an evidence hearing in November.

An anesthesiology resident at UCH, Uhlenkott was arrested last fall after a patient told investigators that Uhlenkott groped him while the man lay unable to see in a hospital bed following eye surgery.

A hospital spokesman said Uhlenkott joined the hospital staff as a resident in January 2012 and resigned a year later. Hospital officials said they have cooperated with the investigation.

In an arrest affidavit filed against Uhlenkott, University of Colorado police say he told investigators that his contact with the man wasn’t sexual, but typical medical contact between a patient and a doctor or nurse. He told police the man had an erection and he only moved it so he could better examine him.

Investigators spoke with several doctors at the Anschutz Medical Campus about whether it is common for medical staff to move a patient’s penis, and the doctors all said it was not.

Police said the patient was not one of Uhlenkott’s, but the doctor struck up a conversation with the man about the man’s tattoos. The man, whose name was not released because he is an alleged victim of a sexual crime, told investigators he couldn’t see the man because he is blind in his right eye and his left eye was covered by a patch following surgery.

The patient said he didn’t know who the man was, but while they were talking he felt the man’s hand reach inside his underwear and fondle his penis.

When the patient returned to the hospital’s eye clinic the following day for a follow-up appointment, he told a supervisor about what had happened. The patient later told police he wanted the person who groped him to be charged with a crime.

Investigators said Uhlenkott initially said he only touched the patient’s hand, but later said he reached inside the patient’s underwear and moved the patient’s penis.