Systems and methods for expediting medical image retrieval based on examination priority are provided. A method includes receiving medical images and parsing the contents to determine medical image information. The method includes applying priority rules based on the medical image information. The priority rules specify an image storage location for storing the medical images. The image storage locations include workstation cache memory and drives of a local storage system having different image access speeds that are slower than an access speed of the workstation cache memory. The method includes storing the medical images at the specified image storage location as defined by the priority rules and retrieving the medical images from the specified image storage location in response to a request to view the medical images at a workstation. The method includes presenting the medical images retrieved from the specified image storage location at a display device of the workstation.