Background <p>In 2021, CMS changed ambulatory evaluation and management (E/M) documentation requirements to reduce physician documentation burden. No prior work has assessed primary care physician (PCP) perceptions of the impact of these changes.</p> Objective <p>To determine whether physicians both perceived and objectively experienced a reduction in documentation time.</p> Design <p>We used cross-sectional and longitudinal survey data of PCPs and linked it to electronic health record (EHR) data. The setting was a large academic medical center (UCSF Health).</p> Participants <p>Eighty-seven PCPs.</p> Main Measures <p>Physicians completed pre- and post-surveys about whether the CMS changes affected the amount of time and effort they spent on documentation. We compared survey data to objective audit log measures of documentation time per E/M encounter.</p> Key Results <p>PCPs perceived spending less time and effort on documentation of Review of Systems (84% reported a moderate or significant decrease) and History of Present Illness and Physical Exam (41%) after the E/M coding change. Further, we found a shift towards PCPs perceiving that they spend more time on clinically meaningful documentation. We did not find a significant association between perceived and actual changes in documentation time (<i>b</i>= −0.01, <i>s.e.</i>=0.019, <i>p</i>=0.666 for History of Present Illness and Physical Exam; <i>b</i>= −0.01, <i>s.e.</i>=0.021, <i>p</i>=0.780 for Review of Systems). Limitations of the study included using data from a single site and a relatively small sample of PCPs.</p> Conclusions <p>PCPs perceived spending less time and effort on documentation after implementation of the 2021 CMS E/M coding changes, changes intended to reduce documentation burden. Using physician perception as an indicator can potentially contribute to understanding the impact of federal policies aimed at reducing documentation burden.</p>