Technically, your program instructs SAS to read 8 characters:
numeric_var = input(Patients, 8.);
That's what "8." means: read 8 characters. If you want SAS to read a different number of characters, that's the statement to change, perhaps to one of.
numeric_var = input(Patients, 9.);
numeric_var = input(Patients, 11.);
The solution from @yabwon will work. But technically, "best32." is a format, not an informat. So SAS just changes "best32." automatically to be "32." and gets the proper result.
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