How cash crisis unfolded

• 2012 – A damning review by accountants Grant Thornton found NHS Tayside had “misrepresented” its accounts by funnelling £5.3 million of taxpayer cash for ehealth initiatives into general expenditure.

• 2014 – NHS Tayside’s board suspends its own constitution for one month to allow cash from an endowment fund to be “retrospectively allocated” to projects already approved by the board after a 201314 budget establishes they have run out of cash. Newly-appointed chief executive Lesley Mclay is present at the meeting.

• March 6 2018 – Staff are told finance director Lindsay Bedford has suddenly retired.

• March 7 2018 – Bosses call for a “thorough independent external review” after learning £5.3m of funding was improperly recorded in NHS Tayside’s accounts. The latest setback means the board will now not meet its target of hitting a £4m deficit for 2017-18 – although the full extent of the overspend will not be known until the conclusion of the review.

• April 4 2018 – It emerges that more than £2.7m of a fund donated by families and public has been used to plug the gaps in the health board’s ailing finances. £2.3m has been allocated to the same ehealth fund misreported since 2012.

• April 5 2018 – Health Secretary Shona Robison uses emergency powers to introduce highest level of intervention to “strengthen the leadership of NHS Tayside with immediate effect”.