OBJECTIVES: To assess the impact of pharmacist-led face-to-face counseling on prescription first refill rate in patients who are new to statins or thyroid medications. METHODS: A retrospective pre-post with case-control cohort study design was employed. In May 2010, two community pharmacies implemented face-to-face counseling by trained pharmacists at the site of care when patients initially filled their statin or thyroid prescriptions. Patients’ first refill rate, defined as percentage of patients who refilled their prescriptions within a two-week’s period after exhaustion of their initial fill, was assessed as the primary outcome measure. Similar computations were performed for patients’ who filled their study medications at the two stores, 12-months prior to the intervention program. Additionally, two control pharmacy stores were selected based on pharmacy type, operational years of stores, prescription volume, and corresponding population characteristics. Refill rates in the pre and post-periods were also computed for control stores. A chi-square test was performed to investigate the relationship between face-to-face intervention and patients’ first refill rate. RESULTS: Test stores that implemented face-to-face counseling, conducted interventions on 81 new to therapy patients in the post period, while a total of 76 (new to therapy patients) were included in the pre-period. A total of 73 and 81 new to therapy patients were selected from control stores in the pre and post-period respectively. For test stores, chi-square analyses showed a significant increase in the refill rates in the post-period as compared to the pre-period (Pre-period: 55.7% Vs Post-period: 70.4% p<0.01), whereas control stores did not show any significant increase across two periods (Pre-period: 56.2% Vs Post-period: 61.7% , p>0.05).  CONCLUSIONS: Pharmacist-led face-to-face counseling had a positive impact on patient’s refill behavior. The study showed an early impact of the program; additional larger pilot studies and longer follow-up period are needed to better understand the full benefit of the program.