Offering support to prepare patients to handle changes in care can contribute to patients’ well-being [8]. The insight is growing that patients’ healthcare needs to deal with the challenges of chronic disease are defined not only by the disease itself but also – and perhaps even more so – by patients’ ability to cope [9]. General practitioners (GPs) are the most appropriate healthcare providers to offer medical and mental support to patients with prevalent conditions such as COPD and diabetes mellitus (DM) who experience changes in care, as they are already used to provide disease-specific care to these patients and are familiar with patients’ context [10,11].