SOME health services could be centralised across Herefordshire and Worcestershire as the two counties look to run a more "sustainable" NHS.

The two counties are working together to produce a Sustainability and Transformation Plan (STP) to show how services will evolve and become sustainable over the next five years.

Private negotiations are underway which are expected to result in some services being centralised across both counties.

It could mean a 50 mile round-trip for Hereford patients travelling to Worcester or vice-versa.

At a meeting of the Worcestershire Council health overview and scrutiny committee (HOSC) councillors raised concerns about the plan.

Cllr Graham Vickery said: "Can you say, in any way how the involvement of Herefordshire will help Worcestershire's trust become more sustainable?"

Simon Trickett, interim chief operating officer for the clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) in the Wyre Forest, Redditch and Bromsgrove, which holds the purse strings to county health care, said: "The basic principle of it is looking at areas which are hard to staff, where there are issues with population numbers.

"There are particular pathways, like strokes, where there's a single stroke service in each county and it still struggles to be staffed.

"This is about looking at things like that, to say 'if we did anything different, across our geography, would it be sustainable'.

"In a nutshell, that's what it's about but we don't know where it will go yet because that's a piece of work being done at the moment."

Dr Carl Ellson, chief clinical officer for south Worcestershire's CCG, told the meeting he felt it may lead to "more patients" going from Herefordshire into Worcester rather than the other way around.