The
COVID-19 pandemic has affected not only the emergency medical system, but also patients' regular
ambulatory care, as such decrease in the number of patients visiting outpatient clinics decreased in 2020 than in 2019, or the ban lifting of subsequent visits by telephone for outpatient clinics since March 2020 in lieu of
ambulatory care for
chronic diseases. In this context, we investigate the impact of the
COVID-19 pandemic on
ambulatory care at Japanese outpatient clinics for patients with chronic neurological diseases during 2020. We collected data from the administrative claims database (DeSC database) covering more than 1 million individuals. Serial changes in the frequency of subsequent outpatient visits to clinics or hospitals (excluding large hospitals) for chronic
ambulatory care of
epilepsy,
migraine,
Parkinson's disease (PD), and
Alzheimer's disease (AD) in 2020 were measured. As a result, since April 2020, the monthly outpatient visits for
epilepsy, PD, and AD decreased slightly but significantly (approximately 0.90 in relative risk [RR]) but visits for
migraine increased (RR = 1.15). Telephone visit was most frequently used in April-May, in less than 5% of monthly outpatient clinic visits for the examined neurological diseases. Outpatient visits for
migraine treatment were more likely to be done by telephone than in case of other diseases (adjusted Odds ratio = 2.08). These results suggest that the impact of
COVID-19 pandemic on regular
ambulatory care for several chronic neurological diseases yielded different effect depending on the disease, in terms of the frequency or type of outpatient visits.