Statistical analyses
Descriptive statistics were used to present cost data. To compare the cost per patient between physicians and nurses, Mann–Whitney U tests were used. When calculating eyecare, homecare and transport costs, there were ≤ 0.01% missing values, and calculations were made for the complete cases. For other calculations, there were no missing values. P-values < 0.05 were considered statistically significant. Data preparation and statistical analyses were performed using IBM SPSS software 28.0 (IBM, New York, USA), and Microsoft Excel (Microsoft, Washington, USA 2013) was used for the cost projections.