**3. Results**

Table 4 shows the results of calculating the societal savings (distinguishing between those of the healthcare system and of the users) from the use of telemedicine in comparison to usual care. While the cost of making phone calls is exclusive to the telemedicine program (€ 42,675), there is a reduction in the time spent by hospital staff. Despite the fact that 21% result in a face-to-face visit, and that the salary per hour is higher in the context of primary care than in hospital care, the consultation time of 79% of cases was reduced by 8 minutes, implying savings in relation to usual care, where all visits are face to face and 15 minutes, for a professional time equivalent to € 154, 542 for the sample under analysis.


**Table 4.** Di fferential costs between telemedicine and usual care (in €).

Regarding patients, while also taking into account cases where telemedicine is ine ffective in avoiding a face-to-face visit, there is a saving on consultation and travel time of € 185,325 and € 317,995 respectively. These two parameters take into account the assumption that 42% of the cases had to be accompanied in face-to-face visits. In terms of fuel, the di fference between the cost of telemedicine and usual care is € 165,211, calculated as the result of subtracting the product of the average travel distance per case (21 km) by the cost/km (€ 0.25) by the number of cases that have avoided a face-to-face visit (41,402, totaling € 223,455) and the equivalent cost from telemedicine visits that have not avoided a face-to-face visit (€ 58,244). Thus, the total of the costs and di fferential savings for the di fferent types of telemedicine is approximately € 780,397 (a saving of € 15 per visit).

#### *Sensitivity Analysis: An Even More Favorable Scenario for Telemedicine*

In order to comparatively evaluate the results, a maximum estimate of the sensitivity analysis is included by varying some of the assumptions (Table 5). This second scenario increases the costs included in Table 3 by 20%: the patient travel time and that of their possible companion (assuming that the actual time is not wholly shown in Google Maps, but that there are transaction costs derived from going to pick up the car, looking for a parking space, attending the consultation or waiting for the patient's turn), the travel cost (measured in €/km, assuming that it could be increased with respect to the evaluation performed for teledermatology [12]) and the hourly wages of medical professionals (assuming that the real cost may be closer to the company cost, rather than the actual remuneration received by the health professionals). The results of this scenario show that the savings increase by approximately 8%, i.e., as much as € 17 per visit and continue to be mostly favorable for the user (85%). A sensitivity analysis was not performed for the opposite scenario, assuming that the calculation of time and distance savings made using Google Maps is, in itself, the minimum.


