Community Health Systems Inc., a Brentwood-based privately held chain of 46 hospitals, will pay $31 million in settling a Justice Department review of its federal health plan billing practices. The company notified the Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General in December 1997 of problems it had found in how several medical procedures were being coded for reimbursement by some of its hospitals.

"We're very glad to have it settled," Wayne Smith, CHS president and chief executive, told NashvillePost.com. The company's happiness with the settlement "doesn't have as much to do with the particular dollar amount -- we are a $1 billion-in-revenue company -- as it does with having this problem solved and having the mechanisms in place to see that we don't have this problem going forward."