That’s the view of the health board’s acting chairperson, Alistair Morris, who has stressed that good communication is going to be “critical” because the public “will see changes”.

The full implications of those changes aren’t yet known or understood, but he said that NHS Fife can no longer work “around the edges” to make ends meet.

“My take of where we are just now is that we need to reduce costs across the whole of NHS Scotland. I think [we’re facing] exceptional levels of cost reduction that’s never been faced before,” Mr Morris explained to the board on Tuesday.

“I think we’re past the stages of being able to tinker around the edges to achieve financial performance outcomes – it has to be a lot more of a seismic or major change. And that’s territory we’ve not been in before.”