Yes and no. Patch Policies has since been enabled for department-level usage (many more capabilities - with associated permissions - for non-master operators). See BigFix WebUI Update - 2019-05-17 for more details on this.
That said, I’m not sure I entirely understand the concern around the Applicable Patches. Patch Policies is meant to show you those patches that are in scope given the defined policy criteria, rather than those that are applicable to managed endpoints (regardless of MO vs nMO).
I do understand the feedback around timezones/scheduling…that is still something we are exploring…