Rostering and scheduling get used as synonyms until something breaks: a stale roster quietly builds a schedule that fails a survey. This glossary entry draws the line between the two and shows why every schedule is only as good as the roster behind it.
At a Critical Access Hospital where one manager owns both the roster and the schedule, a tool that nails scheduling but skips the roster is where expired-credential assignments and CMS survey findings start. Rostering and scheduling are two different jobs, and most tools do one well and the other barely. This guide shows what each actually delivers, plus the three vendor tests that expose a tool covering only half the job.