For Professionals working in the addiction recovery industry who work at residential programs, there's nothing worse than having a client that has been doing fantastic in their program who suddenly in the middle of the night decides that they want to leave AMA/ APA right then This scene can snowball into a nightmare real quickly if not handled correctly with proper techniques Addiction Professionals AMA/ APA Guide; How to Keep Clients From Leaving AMA/ APA. The priority of successful facilities is saving lives The goal for detox units, residential treatment centers, PHPs, IOPs, halfway houses or sober living facilities is to fill their empty beds with quality clients that need their services. Ethics mandate that clients be matched with the facility that can best meet their needs. Many facilities struggle to maintain their census with the proper clients for their facility. Owners and managers spend thousands of dollars on marketing and advertising. The landscape and the laws of marketing treatment facilities and filling beds is changing. The thinking has changed, the terminology has changed, even the definition of addiction has changed. You work hard to get the proper clients into your programs.What is the protocol when a client wants to leave early Against Medical Advice (AMA) or Against Professional Advice (APA)? Is your staff trained on the latest AMA/ APA techniques? Perhaps a behavioral health tech tries to stop the client from leaving, then joined by the primary therapist and maybe even the clinical director. The entire staff ends up focused and distracted, while one client continues to manipulate the situation, causing a scene in your facility. The other clients start to feed off of the chaos and before you know you have three clients leaving instead of one.This will end up in loss of revenue, a poor reputation in the industry, and worst of all it could cost the client