NotSpaghetti
Surely it was Boots wasting money in your case Slimswim in the hope you would buy hearing aids from them?
The doctor is obviously the gateway to specialist services and clearly your GP has referred you.
The audiology team have seen the results from your Boots appointment and have decided they wete accurate enough to fit you with hearing aids.
I thgink it's also because you were found to have conductive hearing loss. Age related hearing loss is usually sensorineural (nerves / inner ear not working well). Conductive can be wax, glue ear, perforated eardrum etc. I guess your GP wanted to be sure you didn't have one of the latter & didn't need a scan of your middle ear for diagnosis, that's why they sent you to ENT to rule out causes that need some intervention. ENT could probably tell from your audiograms that no further investigations were needed, so they were happy to refer to audiology for hearing aids. Your GP was being thorough on your behalf, I don't know if you think that's a waste of money (audiology don't investigate conductive hearing loss, they are a dedicated service for treatment with aids).