Cash strapped NHS Highland is to receive an extra £9.4million of funding next year.
The announcement comes after the north health board was given a £2.5million emergency loan from the Scottish Government.
Health Secretary, Shona Robison said NHS Highland would get a total increase of £24.8m in 2014/16 to deal with pressures facing the health service.
She said that a specific allocation of £6.5million would bring NHS Highland to within 1% of parity with other health boards a year earlier than planned.
NHS Highland will also receive an additional £2.9million specifically to address issues such as the rising cost of new drugs.
Ms Robison said: “Despite Scotland’s fiscal resource budget being slashed in real terms by 10% by Westminster since 2010, we’ve increased the health resource budget by 4.6% in real terms.
“Our NHS services face challenges as a result of the increase in patients with more complex illnesses and the rising costs of expensive new drugs.
“This additional investment of £24.8million increases the resources available to NHS Highland and will help alleviate these pressures, ensuring our NHS can continue to deliver effective and sustainable care to patients across the Highland area.”
It recently emerged that the health board- which has been dogged by financial problems for several years – had been underfunded by several million pounds a year through the use of a formula to calculate its funding.
The funding boost for 2015/16 will ensure that all health boards will receive funding increases next year which are at least 1% above the rate of inflation.
The National Resource Allocation Committee (NRAC) formula for distributing resources within the NHS in Scotland was introduced in 2009/10.
And the Scottish Government’s policy has been to phase in changes to NHS boards’ funding gradually, with a view to bringing all boards to within 1% of NRAC parity by 2016/17.
NHS Highland was unable to provide a comment yesterday.