The main physician providing care for patients of the Waddell Senior Health Center is leaving for a new job in Connecticut, Athens-Limestone Hospital Administrator Phil Dotson confirmed Friday.

Dr. Zia Hassan will leave the center in late April.

The center offers clinical services for those 65 and older by a physician or nurse-practitioner, two-and-a-half days a week.

“We will have no doctor after April to see patients,” said Dotson. “However, we have an obligation to get follow-up care for our patients.”

The news of Hassan’s leaving comes amid a fresh round of fears by some patients that the center is on the verge of closing.

Dotson said Friday that the status of the center, which lost some $281,000 in the past fiscal year, remains unchanged. Dotson said several weeks ago that the hospital board is looking at options to use the three-year-old building if the hospital is unable to continue offering it as a senior health center.

Dotson said one of the options is renting or selling the facility to become a dialysis center. However, Dotson said any rumors that the board has voted to close the center are not true. He said the only major board action in recent days has been a vote this week to donate three acres in hospital’s Medical Village on U.S. 72 East at Lindsay Lane to the city of Athens for a fire station.

“I don’t know if there will be any change between now and the end of April,” said Dotson. “What I said before is basically the same.”