Active patient count

In a due diligence context, active patient count is one of the numbers a buyer checks most carefully against what a seller or broker initially represents, because "total patients of record" is a routinely inflated figure that includes years of names who have moved away, changed insurance, or quietly stopped coming without ever being formally removed from the system. A seller advertising several thousand patients of record can have a genuinely active base a fraction of that size once a real recall window is applied.

Verifying this number means pulling the actual practice management data (patients seen within the last 18 to 24 months, not the full historical patient list), and checking it against production and collections trends over the same period. A shrinking active base alongside flat or declining collections is a specific, often early warning sign that the practice's true health doesn't match the top-line numbers being presented.

This check belongs squarely in due diligence, run against the seller's own software rather than a summary document, since the summary is exactly where an inflated patient count is most likely to appear uncorrected.