Geographically, it is the largest Health Board, covering an area of 32,500 km2 (12,500 sq mi) from Kintyre in the south-west to Caithness in the north-east, serving a population of 320,000 people.

On 1 April 2012 NHS Highland became the lead agency responsible for Adult Social Care services, with the council taking over issues relating to children.

[10] Some campaigners had hoped that the central hub of services in Skye could have been based at Portree Hospital; however the Scottish Health Council has pronounced the process followed by the board as legitimate.

In 2020, Skyports, a drone delivery service provider, began delivering pathology samples, medicine, essential personal protective equipment and COVID-19 testing kits in Argyll and Bute.

[16] NHS Highland funds and runs a specialist pre-hospital care team comprising a senior doctor and an advanced practitioner (nurse or paramedic).

The name being a play on words in relation to the Picts, the group of peoples who lived in what is now northern and eastern Scotland (north of the Firth of Forth) during Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages.

The PICT Team have attended a variety of incidents, including aircraft crashes, road traffic collisions, stabbings, shootings and critically unwell patients.