The Eastern Health Authority suspended a radiologist in southern Newfoundland on May 10 after staff at the Burin Peninsula Health Centre questioned the quality of his work.
The authority is now reviewing 6,000 reports the radiologist conducted on 3,500 patients going back to his hiring in November.
Eastern Health officials said that review would take at least four weeks. But Health Minister Ross Wiseman said Thursday the review needs to be completed in half that time to alleviate patient concerns.
"We needed to move this much faster," he said. "The four to five weeks that they were talking about ... was in my mind too long, and there are many people who are impacted by this.
"Having them wait that long a period without knowing would create too much anxiety."
Patients will be notified by their attending physicians once the results of the review are known, Wiseman said.
He said he would encourage Eastern Health to employ the services of radiologists outside the province to finish the review if it finds it lacks sufficient staff to complete it in time.
In a separate matter, Eastern Health has also been reeling from the discovery last week that faulty breast cancer test results were given to more than 300 patients.
The provincial government has announced a judicial inquiry to determine why so many patients were given inaccurate test results.
