A health board "misrepresented" its finances to the Scottish Government, a report has found.

NHS Tayside, which is under significant financial pressure as it seeks to balance its books, used money earmarked for a digital healthcare scheme for its general expenditure.

A report from external auditors Grant Thornton will be presented to MSPs at a committee meeting next week.

It said that since 2012 NHS Tayside had been "holding" money for the eHealth programme.

This was around the same time the health board started to request extra money from the Scottish Government to meet its costs, a process known as brokerage.

The report said: "In 2016/17 NHS Tayside effectively used the money they were holding (circa £2m) to offset general expenditure in year, which supported them in showing a more favourable financial position.

"As a result this misrepresented NHS Tayside's financial position."

The auditors criticised the "lack of openness, governance and wider transparency" in the transactions between 2012 and 2017.

They noted that the eHealth programme had slipped over the time period.

However the auditors said they did not find evidence NHS Tayside intended to mislead the Scottish Government.

In October last year, a separate report from Audit Scotland said there was a "high risk" of NHS Tayside failing to balance its budget after it missed cost-cutting targets.

Over the last five years the health board received loan funding of £37.5m from the Scottish Government to help it break even.

NHS Tayside chief executive Lesley McLay wrote to the Scottish Government's director general of health in response to the Grant Thornton report, saying the deficit would be higher than the £5m previously reported.

Financial controls would be tightened in order to address the concerns raised in the report, she said.

She said: "The independent review has now looked in detail at this issue with eHealth allocations and found it dates back to 2012.

"We are clear that this agreement between NHS National Services Scotland and NHS Tayside was not acceptable and should not have happened.

"It is right that there is an unrelenting focus on financial performance in Tayside and the board of NHS Tayside remains committed to providing safe and sustainable health and care services which deliver high-quality care and treatment for everyone."