I imagine this is an issue that has come up before, but it was pretty hard to search for, so I decided to just ask it myself: how often should you list a provider as a reference before switching to someone else?
Part of me thinks that I should rotate references immediately (i.e., as soon as I see someone new, that person becomes one of my references and I take off the list the person I saw the longest time ago). However, I've found a few providers are more prompt than others in responding to emails, phone calls, etc. So I usually submit them as my references. I also favor using well-known providers as references over people that are newer to the scene. But I am always worried that I'm going to start annoying the people I keep listing as references. Especially if I keep going to see a new provider instead of going back to see them.
So I'm curious what everyone's thoughts are on this issue: how many times is too much?
(This isn't a last-seen issue: I'll always take someone off my reference list if I haven't seen them for a few months. This is just a question of frequency of use during that window.)