I don't mind reading high highfalutin verbiage (I call it flowery language) or conversational, more informal language, in reports, but I don't like it when both types appear in the same report. I was reviewing a report for publication, and here are some examples of the verbiage:

A) Tension between industry’s demands for quantity and the demands of health-care experts for quality becomes still more trenchant in light of the emerging vision for health-care reform, which prioritizes wellness, prevention,
and primary care—and places nurses center stage.

Or

B) For more than a decade, the Institutes of Medicine and other organizations have exhorted health-care leaders to address performance deficiencies that lead to avoidable errors by enhancing the knowledge base, technological acumen, interdisciplinary competencies, and evidentiary transformation of practice. (Evidentiary transformation refers to the movement to employ evidence-based practice, but some won't get that.)

Or

C) Such considerations become even more consequential in the face of obverse pressure on knowledge and skills demanded by a complex and rapidly changing health-care environment and increasing patient acuity, not to mention the future direction of health care that envisions further expansion of nursing’s practice scope to satisfy the needs for wellness, prevention, and primary care. (I had to look up that use of obverse, but I guess it's right.)

Okay, then there are comments like:

1) "The folly of 'dumbing down' professional standards..." "Lowering professional standards" seems more appropriate to me, given that this is a formal paper.

Or

2)"...has boiled down current and future nursing faculty roles into three overarching categories..." "Boiled down?" These were actually conceptualized.

Or

3) "Regulations vary widely from state to state, with a crazy quilt of combinations and contingencies..." Yes, there are variances across states, but "crazy quilt" hardly seems a way to describe them in a formal paper.

It seems to me the authors were using flowery language in parts of this, and near slang in other parts. These are only a few examples. There are plenty more, on each side.

Am I just being picky?

Possibly, but one of the necessary skills of writing is register. Use of informal language in a formal setting isn't wrong per se but it does jar the reader and is distracting at best.
I agree with your examples. In a formal document I would have found a less jarring way to phrase them.