Heel pain is easy to put off while you try things at home. The useful question is where home treatment stops being the plan.
Where waiting ends
MedlinePlus puts a number on it. MedlinePlus says to contact your provider if your heel pain does not get better after 2 to 3 weeks of home treatment.
Reading the condition closely
The clock runs from the start of home treatment, not from the first twinge. The sentence also asks whether the pain gets better, not whether it disappears. Three weeks of home care with the pain unchanged meets the condition as written.
If you never started any home treatment, the 2 to 3 weeks has not begun counting. Note the date you start, so the count has a clear beginning.
Who to call and what to bring
Call a foot doctor and say how long you have tried home treatment and what the treatment was. That timeline is the part of the story the doctor cannot guess. Itasca readers can bring it to any nearby office.
Four reference pages describe specific heel conditions and are worth reading before the visit: OrthoInfo from the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons on heel pain, MedlinePlus on heel injuries and disorders, Cleveland Clinic on heel bursitis and an evidence-based review of plantar fasciitis diagnosis and therapy in American Family Physician.
The condition attached to the advice
The advice is conditional on home treatment having been tried. Keep a plain note of what you did and for how long, and the 2 to 3 week mark becomes easy to check.