A remote Northern Territory health service says the Commonwealth intervention in Aboriginal communities has made it more difficult to attract and keep permanent medical staff.The Pintubi Homelands Health Service at Kintore says it will be using locum doctors and nurses to keep the clinic open until permanent staff start in mid-February.Service administrator Jeff Hulcombe says while the intervention has helped expose more medical staff to Aboriginal health, it has had a down-side.“It’s certainly also raised the bar of what the expectations of nursing and medical staff want in terms of conditions of service,” he said. “I’ve got pressure from our normal nursing staff to try and match the conditions that the intervention medical people are under and we simply can’t do that because our budget doesn’t allow it.” Read more