Obama administration officials said Thursday  that they were almost a year ahead of their target to change how Medicare pays hundreds of billions of dollars to providers each year.

The Centers for Medicare &  Medicaid Services has sought to make  30 percent of its payments to clinicians and hospitals  be on the basis of the quality of care they provide, rather than the quantity, by the end of 2016, with the aim of hitting 50 percent by 2018.

Patrick Conway, M.D., the chief  CMS medical officer,  said Thursday that the 30 percent goal had been met as of January 2016. The agency estimated  that about  $117 billion out of a projected $380 billion  in Medicare fee-for-service payments for the year were going to providers  participating in pay-for-performance programs.