You can get treated for gonorrhea at most places that provide basic healthcare: your primary care doctor, an urgent care clinic, a sexual health clinic, or a community health center. Treatment is a single injection, and in many cases you can walk in, get tested, and receive the shot in one visit. If cost is a concern, public sexual health clinics often provide testing and treatment at low or no cost.
Types of Facilities That Treat Gonorrhea
Nearly any provider who can order a lab test and administer an injection can treat gonorrhea. Your options include:
- Sexual health or STI clinics. These are often run by city or county health departments. Many offer walk-in appointments, sliding-scale fees, and confidential services. In New York City, for example, the NYC Sexual Health Clinics provide low- to no-cost STI testing and treatment.
- Urgent care clinics. Most urgent care centers can test for gonorrhea and give you the injection on the spot or after results come back. They’re a good option on evenings and weekends when your regular doctor isn’t available.
- Primary care doctors. Your regular physician or nurse practitioner can handle gonorrhea testing and treatment during a standard office visit.
- Planned Parenthood and family planning clinics. These centers routinely screen for and treat STIs, often on a sliding fee scale.
- Community health centers. Federally qualified health centers serve patients regardless of insurance status or ability to pay.
To find a location near you, search for “STI clinic” on your local health department’s website, or use the CDC’s GetTested tool (gettested.cdc.gov), which returns nearby testing and treatment sites by ZIP code.
What Happens During Treatment
Gonorrhea is treated with a single antibiotic injection. The standard is a one-time shot in the arm or hip muscle. That’s typically the entire course of treatment: one visit, one shot. If you also test positive for chlamydia, which frequently co-occurs, you’ll receive an oral antibiotic as well.
Before treatment, your provider will confirm the diagnosis with a lab test, usually a urine sample or a swab. If you’ve had oral or anal sex, mention that specifically, because gonorrhea can infect the throat and rectum, and those sites require separate swabs. Standard urine tests only detect genital infections.
In some clinics, especially sexual health clinics experienced with STIs, providers may give you the injection the same day based on your symptoms and exposure history, then confirm with lab results afterward. This is common when symptoms are obvious or when a partner has already tested positive.
What to Expect After Treatment
You should avoid all sexual activity for at least 7 days after treatment, and your partner needs to be treated too. The 7-day clock applies to both of you. If your symptoms don’t clear up within a few days, contact your provider, because this could signal a resistant strain that needs different medication.
Antibiotic resistance in gonorrhea is a growing concern. Between 2022 and 2024, resistance to the primary injection used for treatment rose from 0.8% to 5% globally, according to the World Health Organization. This is one reason the treatment is given as an injection rather than a pill: the injectable form is more reliably effective. It’s also why follow-up matters if your symptoms persist.
Getting retested a few weeks after treatment is a reasonable step, especially if you had a throat or rectal infection, since those sites can be harder to clear. Your provider can advise on timing.
Getting Your Partner Treated
Your sexual partners from the past 60 days need treatment too, even if they have no symptoms. The most straightforward path is for them to visit a clinic themselves. But if a partner is unlikely to go, a practice called expedited partner therapy (EPT) may help. EPT allows your provider to write a prescription for your partner without examining them in person. This is legal in 48 states plus Washington, D.C.
EPT prescriptions for gonorrhea are typically oral antibiotics, which are considered a backup option rather than the preferred injection. A clinical visit is always better for the partner when possible, particularly for pregnant individuals or when there’s any chance of a drug allergy.
Cost and Confidentiality
If you have health insurance, gonorrhea testing and treatment are generally covered as preventive care. Without insurance, costs vary widely: urgent care visits might run $100 to $250 before lab fees, while public STI clinics often charge nothing or use a sliding scale based on income.
STI treatment is confidential. In all 50 states and D.C., minors can independently consent to STI testing and treatment without a parent’s permission. That said, confidentiality protections beyond consent vary by state. Some states require clinicians to keep the visit confidential, while others leave disclosure to the clinician’s discretion. If privacy is important to you, calling the clinic ahead of time to ask about their confidentiality policies is worthwhile, particularly regarding insurance statements or explanation-of-benefits documents that might be mailed home.
Public health clinics tend to offer the strongest privacy protections, since they’re designed to minimize barriers to STI care. Many don’t require insurance information at all.