You can get treated for chlamydia at a wide range of places: your primary care doctor, a sexual health clinic like Planned Parenthood, an urgent care center, a retail pharmacy clinic like CVS MinuteClinic, a local health department, or even through a telehealth visit from home. Treatment is a single course of oral antibiotics, so almost any provider who can write a prescription can handle it.
Primary Care and Urgent Care
Your regular doctor’s office is a straightforward option if you already have a provider. They can order a test (usually a urine sample or swab), prescribe antibiotics, and handle follow-up. If you don’t have a primary care doctor or can’t get an appointment quickly, urgent care clinics offer the same service on a walk-in basis. Both settings are equipped to diagnose and treat uncomplicated chlamydia in a single visit.
Sexual Health Clinics
Planned Parenthood and similar reproductive health clinics specialize in STI care and are often the most affordable option. Planned Parenthood locations offer low-to-no-cost testing and treatment on a sliding scale based on income and family size. They accept many insurance plans and can help uninsured patients enroll in financial assistance programs. Most locations allow walk-ins, and if they can’t see you immediately, they’ll typically schedule you for the same day.
These clinics are also designed for privacy and comfort around sexual health conversations, which matters if that’s something you’re thinking about.
Local Health Departments
County and city health departments run STI clinics that often provide free or reduced-cost testing and treatment. You can find one near you by searching your zip code on the CDC’s “Get Tested” tool at gettested.cdc.gov. Many of these clinics also offer partner notification services, helping you inform sexual partners confidentially if you’d prefer not to do it yourself.
Retail Pharmacy Clinics
Walk-in clinics inside pharmacies like CVS MinuteClinic can evaluate your symptoms, order lab tests, and prescribe medication if needed. The convenience here is that once you get your prescription, you can fill it at the pharmacy counter in the same building. These clinics are typically open evenings and weekends, making them a practical choice if your schedule is tight. Not all locations offer full STI services, so it’s worth calling ahead or checking online before you go.
Telehealth Services
If you’d rather skip the waiting room entirely, several telehealth platforms offer virtual consultations for chlamydia. You complete a screening online, speak with a licensed provider by video or chat, and receive a prescription sent directly to your local pharmacy. Some services advertise same-day prescriptions with pickup in under an hour. Costs for the virtual visit itself start around $40 without insurance, though prices vary by platform.
Telehealth works best if you already have a positive test result or a known exposure and just need the prescription. If you haven’t been tested yet, some platforms will order a home test kit or direct you to a local lab first.
What Treatment Looks Like
Chlamydia treatment is simple: a short course of oral antibiotics, typically taken as pills. There are no injections or ongoing medications for uncomplicated cases. The antibiotic itself is inexpensive. One study of commercially insured patients found the average drug cost was about $9, while the outpatient visit averaged around $142 in 2018 dollars. If you’re uninsured, sliding-scale clinics and health departments can bring that visit cost down significantly or eliminate it entirely.
You should avoid sexual contact for seven days after completing treatment to prevent spreading the infection.
Getting Your Partner Treated
Chlamydia passes easily between sexual partners, so your recent partners need treatment too. In 48 states plus Washington, D.C., providers can use what’s called expedited partner therapy: they prescribe antibiotics for your partner without requiring a separate office visit or exam. This means you can pick up medication for your partner at the same time you get yours. If you’re unsure whether your state allows this, your provider can tell you.
Follow-Up Testing
After finishing antibiotics, you don’t need to rush back for a retest right away. Testing too soon, before three to five weeks, can pick up remnants of dead bacteria and give a false positive. The recommended window for retesting is three months after treatment. This retest checks for reinfection rather than treatment failure, since reinfection from an untreated partner is common.
If you can’t make it back at the three-month mark, guidelines suggest retesting whenever you next seek care within 12 months of treatment. Either way, getting retested at some point is worth doing. Studies consistently show that repeat positive rates after chlamydia are high enough to make that follow-up visit important.