Richard Oster, DO

Dr. Richard Oster, who goes by Dr. Rick Oster, practices internal medicine at Edgefield Internal Medicine in Johnston. He graduated with honors from the West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine and completed his internship and residency in internal medicine at Charleston Area Medical Center.

Early in his career he ran a traditional office and hospital practice in southwest Georgia. When an F5 tornado destroyed the community's hospital, he stepped in as an emergency medicine physician in temporary facilities until things stabilized. That experience pushed him toward inpatient medicine, and for more than a decade he worked as a hospitalist, eventually managing hospitalist groups and caring for some of the sickest patients in the building.

That range of practice showed him the most common gaps in how care gets delivered, and it eventually led him to Direct Primary Care, which he found to be the way primary care should work.