China will severely punish people who insult medical workers or set up shrines to late patients in hospitals, according to a guideline issued on Thursday.

The guideline, jointly released by the Supreme People's Court (SPC), the Supreme People's Procuratorate, the Ministry of Public Security, the Ministry of Justice and the National Health and Family Planning Commission, said that six types of criminal conduct disrupting medical work will be severely punished.

"For some time, crimes such as assaulting doctors and damaging hospitals have been occurring in some regions," said SPC spokesman Sun Jungong of rising doctor-patient tensions in China.

There have been cases of aggrieved families setting up shrines in hospitals, especially when they accuse staff of negligence leading to the deaths of loved ones.

The guideline aims to crack down on and prevent such crimes in a bid to maintain medical treatment order and guarantee legitimate rights for both patients and doctors, Sun said.

The six crimes it specifies include attacking doctors and damaging public property, setting up shrines and burning paper money (a Chinese custom for paying respect to the dead) in medical institutions, restricting doctors' freedom, insulting medical workers, entering medical institutions with illegal arms, and instigating others to commit crimes against medical staff.

Those whose conduct constitutes criminality will be punished in accordance with the law, according to the guideline.

The guideline also urged medical institutions to reinforce complaint management and build convenient channels for patients to file complaints. When people sue medical institutions for compensation, courts are urged to handle such cases in a timely manner.

The lack of judicial interpretation concerning medical disputes has made it difficult for judicial organs to deal with such cases in less than a couple of years, said Wan Xin with the Beijing Lawyers Association.

"The guideline... will provide legal basis for judicial organs to handle such cases more effectively," said Ma Yan with the SPC.

The SPC on Thursday published details of four criminal cases of patient assaults on medical staff in the past four years.

In one case, cerebral thrombosis patient Wang Yingsheng hacked a doctor to death with an axe at the First Teaching Hospital of Tianjin University of Traditional Chinese Medicine on Nov. 29, 2012, after the patient received acupuncture but felt unhappy with the treatment.

Wang was sentenced to death for intentional homicide and has been executed.

Another patient in central China's Hunan Province was given the death sentence for stabbing a doctor to death in 2011.

In the other two cases, people were penalized for violently insulting medical workers or damaging public property in hospitals

According to official statistics, Chinese hospitals received 7.3 billion outpatients and discharged 191 million patients in 2013. Nearly 70,000 medical disputes were reported in the year.